


Fleurs de Liberthé

by beheadaed, evynyx_pdf, Reynier, secace



Series: Caffè Arturiano [11]
Category: Arthurian Literature - Fandom, Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Depression, Multi, tag as we go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26599993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beheadaed/pseuds/beheadaed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/evynyx_pdf/pseuds/evynyx_pdf, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reynier/pseuds/Reynier, https://archiveofourown.org/users/secace/pseuds/secace
Summary: Lancelot attempts to cooperate with his new colleagues.
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Caffè Arturiano [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017424
Comments: 27
Kudos: 19





	1. Back-Alley Philosophy

**Author's Note:**

> hi so this is gonna be the last of our chronological fics and we're super excited to share! let us know what you think <3

> ...won't listen to you!" cried Tintin. "I've learned to rely on my own internal derivatives!”
> 
> Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, influential member of the Comité de Sûreté Général and ambassador-envoy to the Rat Autocrat of Paris (Joan of Arc), looked sad. "But everything is more fun if you are mean about it."
> 
> “That’s what you think.” Tintin lifted his head and steeled his gaze. “But you are just very bad and I believe in human kindness.” Then he pulled out a 15-mm revolver and shot Saint-Just through the head, spattering viscera all over the opera house. Blood flowed down the stage, glinting lowly red in the floodlights. Saint-Just’s knees buckled and, an expression of shock on his face, he crumpled to the floor. The audience (whom Tintin had not noticed) applauded. 
> 
> OoOoO
> 
> Salut tout le monde... désolé que ça fait longtemps sans update mais la vie m'a foutu un peu :-((((( jsais pas comment expliquer mais en fait j'ai réalisé que l'amour n'existe pas et y'a seulement l'amitié car le cœur ne se concerne pas avec la moralité.... ouai je me suis tombé amoureux d'un catif, d'un méchant, mais maintenant je msuis décidé de me concentrer sur la famille et les amis. en sommaire le gars que j'aimais est un connard et maintenant il est aussi mon collègue et jnai aucune idée comment gérer cette situation car je nveux vraiment pas lui parler. merci à tous mes lecteurs :-)))))))) <3 <3 <3 <3
> 
> JnC
> 
> hey me and cameron put ur author’s note thru google translate :( sorry about life stuff. This was a really funny chapter i loved the bit where robespierre went to 18th Century Target and got a bunch of fake oranges. <3 hope life goes better soon
> 
> xxxbloodysecace666xxx
> 
> ahhhhhhh thank you :-) im doing okay actually u know french is my vent language so im just,,,,, hahaa u know its just life. Its just weird cause i was doing really well and i was i mean i was just well you know about it and now it is what things are… and i dont know if it is like that or how to feel about it when it does. but thank u :-) i will try to be as good as it should necessitate
> 
> JnC
> 
> what.
> 
> xxxbloodysecace666xxx
> 
> Thank u guys <3 :-(((((

“Why do the flowerboys get to look at their phones on shift?”

“Agh!” said Lancelot and sort of tossed his phone into the air, narrowly catching it as Gaheris stared at him judgmentally. “Hi, Gaheris. So— sorry Gaheris. I’ll leave.”

He stared blankly at the small breakroom. “Where?”

Lancelot panicked and gestured about a yard to the right of where he was standing currently. “Um, Over there.”

“Oh.” Gaheris shrugged. “Okay.”

“I— wait.” The voice of Cerise chided him gently in his imagination. “Actually, I’m not going over there, I’m staying here.”

“Okay,” said Gaheris again. “Bye.”

“Bye,” said Lancelot miserably, and sulked down at his phone again. It was nice of Jez and Cameron to leave him so many comments. He had never met them, and they didn’t know his name, and he was— in his heart of hearts— worried that they only kept reading his 200k _The Adventures of Tintin_ /French Revolution RPF fanfiction out of a sense of moral duty, but they still brightened his day somewhat. And now that he was forced to work with people outside his immediate family (plus Aunt Morgan, who was honorary family), he had been taking more and more refuge in the latest chapters of Tintin’s entirely gen-rated, Graphic Depictions of Violence-tagged historical escapade.

“Ah, Ao3 dot com,” someone said smoothly over his shoulder.

Having learned from Gaheris, Lancelot avoided any unconscious reaction and opted to stand perfectly still instead. “Hng.” Turning to face his accuser, he shoved his phone into his back pocket. “You don’t— work here.”

“I do not,” Priamus agreed, and made no move to leave.

Lancelot nodded hesitantly. “Okay. Uh, hi.” He decided to try phrasing it as a question. “You don’t work here?”

“Correct again!” Priamus said cheerfully, surveying the folding chairs and table and finding nothing of interest. “I’ll do you one better: you _do_ work here.”

“Uhhhh-huh,” Lancelot agreed again slowly. Where had Gaheris gone. He was surely rude enough for this. He tried to remember customer service, but it was difficult, because Priamus was not a customer and did not seem to want anything including service. “Why are you wearing a suit?”

“It’s important to make a good impression,” Priamus said evenly. “Never know when you might meet a potential employer or lover.”

“But the tie is undone,” Lancelot pointed out.

“For sexy, people-who-know-how-to-tie-a-tie reasons,” Priamus assured him.

“Okay.” He thought for a second. “My break is over.”

He technically had thirteen more minutes, but it was worth the sacrifice of not having to stand there while Gawain’s mean friend made fun of him. He could go back out front where Gawain’s mean brothers could make fun of him, because that was his life now. He hastily tied on his apron and fled the breakroom.

Priamus watched Lancelot leave, shrugged, and went back to lingering for a spell. He hoped entertainment would find him and, as usual, it promptly did. The door flung itself open and Lionel, Lancelot’s eldest cousin, threw a Libertea apron vaguely in the direction of Priamus, who did not catch it. It crumpled on the floor, and lay there ignored by its owner who slammed the door to the breakroom behind him and leant heavily against it, running a hand through his ill-cut black hair. “Gawain!” he said in explanation.

“I agree,” said Priamus, hoping that whatever crisis Lionel was having would prevent him from pointing out that Priamus wasn’t, strictly, allowed in the backroom, due to not in any way being an employee.

“I'm totally straight,” Lionel said defensively, unasked.

“Gawain,” said Priamus again, guessing the gist of the issue.

Lionel lowered his hand to cover his face and huffed. “Okay, yes, maybe I hooked up with him last year on Halloween, but that was Halloween and it doesn’t count, _Priamus!”_

“Right, totally. Which is why you bring it up now,” Priamus agreed mildly.

“There’s been a...” He gestured vaguely. “Resume-ment of tensions.”

“I don’t think that’s a word,” Priamus said in an aside. Then louder, “Oh, yes, the merger. Close quarters and all that, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Lionel pointedly. “He’s doing it on purpose. It’s part of his evil plan.”

_He’s trying not to do that anymore,_ Priamus didn’t say, because there were things that had been divulged to him in confidence which other people did not need to know. Instead he said, “He’s too distracted with school to have evil plans. I think you’re just not straight.”

Lionel took his hands from his face to glare at Priamus. “I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. Do you really think so?” 

Ignoring the rapid about-face, Priamus shrugged. “Yeah, sounds like it. Wanna run through it?”

Lionel was his least favourite Du Lac— he had not yet been informed that Hector existed— and ranked only slightly higher on his list of most attractive French people, which he would have been surprised to learn was not something most people had. But Priamus was a fundamentally decent person and besides, he had nothing to do for the next ten minutes until Gawain’s shift ended. Other people’s crises were entertaining enough.

“Uh, no,” said Lionel, distrust increasingly overriding his breakdown. “I barely even know who you are. You just appeared at my workplace one day and said your name was Priamus. Is that even your name?”

“It’s my last name,” said Priamus.

Lionel frowned. “What?”

The door opened.

“Hey, Priamus. Lionel. You know where Kay is? I have like ten minutes left on my shift and we’re out of—” Gawain stopped. “Why are you making that face? Are you okay?”

“Hm,” said Lionel. “I'm fine. Hey, Gawain, do you think I'm straight?”

Gawain opened his mouth, his eyebrows raised, and then paused as though checking himself. His face twisted in polite faux-consideration. “I mean, it’s your own decision. But you did very much have sex with me, so I’d go with no.”

“Gawain Orkney!” A distinctive holler broke through the peace of the backroom. 

“Well,” said Gawain, “found Kay. Good luck, Lionel!” 

The door closed.

“Hm,” Lionel said finally. “So, I'm definitely not straight. Thank you Priamus, I still don't like or trust you.”

With this pronouncement, he walked out, letting the door slam behind him.

Morgan gave him an odd look when Lancelot joined her at the counter. “Don’t you still have ten minutes?”

“Uh, well— I’m a real go-getter,” he explained lamely, looking like he didn’t want to go anywhere but home or get anything but a nap. 

“Good for you,” she said, not believing him remotely but kindly letting it go. “I suppose you can take the compost and coffee filters out back with Gawain.”

“Huh?” said Lancelot, as at the same time, across the shop, Gawain also exclaimed wordlessly. Morgan, who probably thought she was being nice by giving him a simple, non-customer task, watched this passively. After an awkward moment Lancelot mumbled some agreement and found several bags of coffee grounds foisted upon him. This was fine. He’d made it through several brief and awkward conversations with Gawain in the intervening weeks since the merger, and this one would surely be no less painful. Ah, wait. That wasn’t reassuring at all. 

They made their way to the back in coordinated silence and emerged into the dusty late afternoon, concrete and gravel of the alley turned almost soft in the low orange glow. 

“I usually do this alone,” Gawain offered, making it sound more like an explanation than an accusation. Lancelot was still deciding whether he should respond when Gawain knocked a few times on the side of the dumpster, as if politely announcing their presence. 

A reddish shape shot out of the far end from amidst the accumulated debris, and across a stretch of crunching gravel, setting into a fox behind a cardboard box about ten yards off.

“I found a fox in the trash,” Gawain said, as if this was very normal. “A few weeks ago.”

“Oh?” This was not a word, and therefore did not break his attempted moratorium on talking to Gawain. 

Gawain nodded, accepting this as encouragement. “Yeah I’ve been feeding it on my breaks, trying to, you know, domesticate it. I call it Renard.”

“Huh.” He gave up, upending one bag of coffee grounds into the metal bin. “Why?”

“It’s a fox,” Gawain said, a defensive _isn’t it obvious_ rather implicit. Then he frowned at his own statement. “I guess it’s uncreative.”

“I meant why are you trying to domesticate it?”

Gawain blinked. “Oh.” He glared at the trash bag he’d been given, and tossed it into the dumpster as if this was an action that required intense concentration. “I mean, very few people don’t hate me at the moment. This possibly rabid animal is the only one here who hasn’t actively been wronged by me.”

Oh. He didn’t know quite what to do with this. He didn’t like feeling sympathetic in this direction. “Is it working? Uh, domesticating it— Renard?”

Gawain hummed thoughtfully. “Hard to tell. Last week he bit me twice, and he’s only done that once this week.”

“Huh. That’s probably good.” It probably wasn’t, but it didn’t seem worth getting into. Gawain could get rabies if he wanted. That was his prerogative.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, really, I don’t think I’m making any progress at all,” Gawain admitted, shutting one half of the dumpster lid, leaving the other open, presumably for Renard egress. 

“I don’t hate you,” Lancelot said suddenly in the silence after the crash of metal against metal. “I— just so you know.” 

Gawain did not look up. “Uh— thank you?” 

Something brushed at Lancelot’s pant leg and he looked down to find the fox staring at him piteously. “Shoo,” he said. “I don’t have any food for you.”

“He doesn’t want food.” Despite this, Gawain reached into his pocket and produced a cough drop, which he placed on the ground in front of the fox like a votive offering. It was still wrapped. “He wants violence and bloodshed.”

“Don’t we all…” mumbled Lancelot. Gawain glanced up at him in half-amused surprise, his hair glinting bronze in the glowing sunlight. “I mean— hypothetically. Not— I’m not threatening you with violence. Oh, God.”

Fortunately Gawain didn’t look uncomfortable, just concerned. He propped the dumpster open with one hand and emptied in his last bag of coffee grounds. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” said Lancelot firmly, and then felt guilty for lying. He was very stressed. He did not enjoy his job as it was and he enjoyed it less now that he had mean colleagues. Not that that was Gawain’s fault— no, as far as he could tell it was Lionel’s, and possibly the mean Orkney brother who hated him was also involved. The one with the pink hair who, mercifully, had not made the switch over to the merged location. Eggs. That was it. Eggs Orkney. “Well, no. I mean. Yes.”

There was a polite pause. “Uh-huh,” said Gawain slowly. He crossed his arms, his shoulders raised. It was none of Lancelot’s business, but whatever life development had prompted the merger seemed to have put Gawain through the grinder as well— he had lost weight in the last month, and the shadows under his eyes, once a charming addition to his face on Monday mornings and sure to be gone by Tuesday, had made their permanent bruise-like home. “Can I say something? I understand if not. I don’t want to, like, make you listen to me or anything.”

Lancelot squinted at him. He looked earnest, his hands fidgety. “Okay.”

“I’m— really sorry that we kind of— invaded your workplace.” The words seemed forced. “I wasn’t involved with that and I didn’t suggest it and I would really quit if I didn’t need the money, because I don’t want you to be uncomfortable and I— I guess I, ah— I respect that you don’t want to talk to me and also that my brothers are really mean to you and I’m sorry about that— but I also can’t tell them what to do because they’ll take it— I mean— wow. Sorry. I should rehearse these things.”

“No, well— I got the jist of it,” Lancelot managed, because this was quite a lot really and he certainly couldn’t address it all. “It’s not— I mean I was already not great it’s not, your fault really. Um—” something between morbid curiosity and dangerous sympathy had been drudged up in his mind. “Did something happen to you? With you? Uh— I shouldn’t ask— sorry.”

Gawain watched Renard gulp down the wrapped cough drop like a pelican with a squirming fish, in somber silence. “I mean, if you’re asking— I don’t want to just unload all my problems on you. I don’t— I really haven’t earned that honestly.”

"Oh, I mean—" Lancelot considered his words for a moment. It was incredible what watching someone fail to tame a fox did to humanize them in one's eyes, but still, Gawain was a _bad person._ This wasn't arguable. He was a selfish, manipulative asshole and Lancelot was self-aware enough to know he was pretty easily manipulated. But Gawain looked so genuinely miserable, and the spell that held everyone in his orbit seemed to be fundamentally broken lately. "I asked you."

Gawain gave him a sidelong glance, a measured gaze on his face. It was an odd feeling, to recognize something would have made him breathless a month ago, and didn't anymore. "I had a huge fight with my brother, the day before the merger, and was— informed that I left a lot to be desired, uh, as a brother. And person. I—" He frowned suddenly and dug around in his other pocket, producing a stick of gum. "Foxes can't have gum, probably?" 

They both looked at the fox, which crouched a few yards off, wary but hoping for more food that wasn't a still-wrapped cough drop.

"Probably not," Lancelot guessed, trying to remember if he knew anything about the care and keeping of stray foxes found in the dumpster. He did not.

Gawain nodded. "Okay, yeah. Sorry." His hands seemed lost without pockets to search, and folded over themselves uncomfortably behind his back like a soldier at miserable attention. "So. After the fight I left— it was around 2 am. I did— I did something really stupid. Uh—"

"Oh, no," Lancelot muttered, concerned about what Gawain would qualify as such and whether he was about to become an accessory to something. 

Gawain looked up, a bit alarmed. "What are you thinking? I didn't kill anyone." He paused. "Wow, there is no more suspicious way I could have phrased that. I'll just— I did a breaking and entering into a place of business. Uh, heavy emphasis on the breaking."

"Oh!" Lancelot said, maybe more brightly than that statement warranted. "That's not ideal, uh, could be worse."

"...Thanks."

The fox shuffled off a few steps in the gravel and yipped experimentally. Gawain shrugged, looking defeated. "That's all I had on me."

"Maybe he wants..." Lancelot trailed off. He vaguely remembered having a dog when he was quite young. It hadn't wanted anything of him but to go away. He'd met Morgan's cat a couple times. It usually wanted to hurt him. "Like a toy or something," he posited, unconvinced of his own suggestion.

Gawain also didn’t look convinced but, willing to give the plan a fair shake, he picked up a stray stick and tossed it in the vague direction of Renard. Renard did not like this and, with an irritated fox noise, returned to the relative stick-free safety of his cardboard box.

Gawain blew out a breath in defeat. “Well. Anyway. I sort of— completely was caught and lost my scholarship and— and kind of had a pretty public breakdown in my place of employment, which— wasn’t great— God, I hadn’t cried in a whole decade? It really sucks apparently. Uh, there was a gender crisis— my brother still hasn’t really forgiven me— God.”

He seemed to hit _Why am I telling you this,_ at about the same moment Lancelot did, and lapsed into silence. “Um, I know I asked, but—” Lancelot spoke each word carefully, “You don’t have to tell me all this out of, like, guilt or something.”

“I’m not,” Gawain said quickly.

“Oh- okay. Why— why are you telling me this?”

He shrugged, like it was obvious. “It’s you?”

Apparently noticing Lancelot’s confusion— he looked a little confused himself— Gawain went on. “I mean— you’re nice.”

The cardboard box rocked back and forth a bit. “Ah. I hope I am, I try to be.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Gawain said, like it was one word. “Maybe my brain isn’t— isn’t set up for it or something. I don’t know how not to be myself, and— that seems to be a pretty awful thing. But I think if I keep going I’ll keep— hurting people, and I don’t want to— I don’t want to want to.” He took a deep breath, looked a little shaky. “Fuck. Fuck. Sorry. This isn’t— it’s my fault I’m like this, you don’t deserve— I’m going to shut up now.” 

He did, in fact, shut up, watching the cardboard box wiggle forward inch by inch. Maybe the fox hoped to sneak up on them having food.

Whatever he’d thought was up with Gawain, this certainly was a lot more than that. Lancelot’s first instinct was to say something like “Huh! Good luck, sorry!” and flee inside, then pretend to only speak French to get out of further interaction. But he really didn’t want to be the sort of person who did that, and besides was fairly sure Gawain spoke French, anyway. 

“I could— help you. Teach you?” he offered, after enough time to give it fair consideration but not enough to talk himself out of it.

“What?”

_Oh God. That was so stupid. Change your name and get a job processing uranium in Croatia._ Already considering the logistics of this petrified impulse, Lancelot chanced to look at Gawain’s face. Found surprising uncertainty, something like gratitude. “You wouldn’t— it wouldn’t make you miserable? I don’t— God, you really owe me less than nothing, seriously.”

Which was true, but there was some terribly familiar caste to Gawain’s expression, far too reflective. “I don’t think so. No more than anything else and— I’m offering.” _Because it’s you,_ but that was an unconnected series of words that presented itself in his mind with no justification or permission.

“If you really— you’re really offering. I— uhm— am a little lost at the moment— metaphorically, I mean, I can get out of this alley no problem.” He chuckled awkwardly. “So. Yes. Please. If you truly don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, and found he didn’t think it was a lie. At least, it wasn’t completely a lie. 

Gawain looked at him for another half moment, then sharply away. “Cool. Okay. I— Thank you, really.” He paused as the box shuffled a foot closer. “We’ve been standing out here a while, God.”

“Oh— yeah.” The air remained painfully awkward, but at least that discomfort was more of a shared enemy now. 

Gawain turned back to the box from which a fluffy tail emerged unsubtly, as they stood at the back door. “Sorry I threw a stick at you.”

“That’s a good start,” Lancelot said encouragingly. It wasn’t really, but he was trying to be positive. 

The smile Gawain shot him was small, half of a pout, but a smile nonetheless. “You don’t have to patronize me,” he said, but it didn’t sound accusatory. Then, as though it was the same thought, he said, “Here— I can teach you to make coffee in return. I’ve seen you try. It’s a nightmarish experience.”

“I’m even worse at flowers,” Lancelot said, almost bragging.

“Yeah, I know, I’ve seen the blood.”

Thoughts caught up. “Oh— I mean by that— that I accept. Uh.” 

“Cheers,” said Gawain, and raised his fist as though it held a fine wineglass. “To mutual edification.”

“Cheers,” said Lancelot, and the sun set.

It was later that evening, much later, that Priamus got an email from Lucius. He had climbed onto the roof of his apartment complex and was sitting propped against the blocky ventilation shaft, his headphones on and his laptop open on his lap, when the notification pinged up. 

He clicked it, mainly out of boredom. He had dragged his portable telescope up the fire escape to the roof, hoping to look at cool things in the sky and maybe point lasers at passing planes, but as soon as he had emerged, a smog had rolled in and blocked his view. It was very depressing. Life was a dreary never-ending battle against the tides of boredom. 

The subject line of the email was _FUCK TIME WHAT NOT EXCUSED._ This was relatively par the course for Lucius— he tended to put words together to convey emotion, rather than any actual sense. The contents were more concerning. First there was a link to TikTok, which was odd, and under that two words: _Call me._

Priamus clicked on the TikTok. It had been shot in a dirty parking lot by someone who was not a very good cameraman, but what it depicted was undeniable: Priamus and Gawain, fighting their seminal back-alley knife fight, and then really very much not fighting anymore. 

“Fuck,” breathed Priamus.


	2. Departures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gawain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> evelyn joins the array of writers!

“I’m getting fired,” Priamus announced, as soon as Gawain picked up the phone. “Do you have any crimes to suggest? Maybe if I steal a shit ton of money Lucius will like me again. Did you know he’s been skimming off my salary for four years? Also, I adopted a stray rat.”

Gawain paused in the task which had been occupying him-- lying upside down in his spinny chair with his knees hooked over the back and his hair grazing the floor, thinking about how he should be doing homework and instead flipping through Instagram with a guilty desperation. The call had been a relief. The information delivered was less so. He parsed through the various sentences and settled on the least menacing. “Uh… a rat? What are you naming it?”

“Oh, it has a name.” There was a pause on the other end and the sound of a food processor before Priamus spoke again. “Its name is, uh, Crabbage. Don’t ask me why, it’s not my fault. And saying I adopted a _stray_ rat is incorrect, I actually-- mm, needs more garlic-- I was given a rat that was going to be stray soon. You know Gerry?”

“Huh?”

“The black market CD dealer? He showed up once at the tea shop. Tried to tell your artsy friend not to vote third party. We had to explain that French people can’t vote in elections here. You really don’t remember this?”

Vague memories of a face so bland it could have been crafted out of pasty cardboard appeared in Gawain’s brain. “The one who ordered a tea and wouldn’t clarify which kind?”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s Gerry.” Priamus sighed overdramatically. “Anyway, he moved apartments and the new one doesn’t allow pets. So, rat. You’re a nasty little rat, aren’t you, Crabbage?”

“Please never talk to your rat in my presence again,” said Gawain. He didn’t understand pets. The closest he had to a pet was his horse, Morholt 2, although it was technically the school’s horse-- his thoughts snapped back like a too-tight rubber band. Not his horse any longer, not since he’d been dropped from the equestrian team. 

( _Team_ was a generous term. It was technically a team, but only because Ysabele, the captain and one of only two other members, was very good at navigating school bureaucracy. The horses belonged to the Zoology department, and Ysabele, Gawain, and their friend Roges (who had been very excited about horses before settling on a fox as his fursona) had been permitted to train them for dressage as part of an unspecified experiment. Or, possibly, Ysabele had pulled some strings and come up with a plausible excuse to give to the chair. Gawain didn’t ask too many questions where Ysabele was concerned.)

“Stinky rat bastard,” Priamus said, as a point of pride. “Anyway. You’re ignoring the bigger issue here.”

He was. He was also ignoring the loud voice in his head which was saying _why the hell are you asking me this? Why on earth would you trust me to give advice?_ It was a complicated mess of impulses, half irritation and half self-loathing. He’d done some vague searching online about what to do when you felt like you were a terrible human being, and everything had sounded roughly the same: 1) buy a positivity book (a scam, in his opinion), or 2) talk to a therapist (very much not an ordeal he wanted to undertake at this point in his life). So instead he had latched onto the ephemeral concept of Trying To Be A Better Person. What exactly this entailed was not clear to him, but Priamus-- his lone confidant, despite their brief acquaintance-- had suggested that a good start would be not doing things that made him feel mean. 

Telling Priamus he had no clue what to do and was a lot better as a distraction than a counselor felt mean. To Priamus-- to himself, too. He squinted at the fan circling its squeaky way above him and tried to formulate helpful advice. “Uh… why are you getting fired?”

“Aha. Well.” 

“Uh-huh?”

Priamus made a noise that sounded like the auditory equivalent of raised eyebrows. “So… you remember how we met?”

Lucius. Knife fight for fun. Other things for more fun. “Yeah?”

“Turns out your brother filmed it and put it on that weird social media thing for teenagers. Tiktok.”

This was unsurprising and also, despite his better instincts, intriguing. Gawain had always wanted to go viral for something stylish, and a knife fight was pretty stylish. “And this got you fired because…?”

“Turns out Lucius has a TikTok.”

Gawain tried to bolt upright, immediately felt something twinge in his back, and instead sank slowly onto the floor like a limp eel. “Woah. Fuck. Why? I mean, sorry. Is this bad? It feels pretty funny, I will be real.”

“I mean,” said Priamus, “I’m getting fired.”

Uh-oh. Mistakes had been made. “Yeah, uh, that really sucks. I’m really sorry.”

“Nah, nah, I’m kidding, it’s pretty funny. I mean, it’s Lucius. Why the fuck does he have TikTok? For the--”

“For the dances?” 

“Yeah, yeah, it must be for the dances.” Another pause filled with food processor noises. “But I am losing my job and also four years of back pay. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get rich quick and bribe him into keeping me.”

Vague thoughts surfaced themselves in Gawain’s brain and were summarily dismissed on the basis of being bad. “Museum theft?”

“Zero experience. I’ve done a lot of things in museums but stealing art isn’t one. Also, do you have any idea how hard finding a fence is? My friend Gianni Schi--”

“Wait.” Gawain caught sight of a pack of mint gum strewn on the floor and reached for it. It was slightly too far away. He gave up. “What things have you done in museums? This sounds like a story.”

“You don’t want to know,” said Priamus ominously. 

Gawain checked his watch. It was just past midnight. He still hadn’t done the report for his 21st Century Social Movements course, which was at 8 the following morning. “I do, though. I really do. With details.”

“I’m not having phone sex with you, I just got fired!”

“Well, that’s good, because I’m too tired. I just want to know your museum escapades.” He scanned his brain for how to be helpful, since this route had failed. “Uhm. I’m more of a hobbyist criminal, sorry.”

“It’s fine… I’m grasping at straws, anyway. Also, I just tried blending cereal and gelato. It’s shit. The garlic didn’t help.”

“I hate you,” said Gawain. He very much didn’t. Priamus was his only real friend outside his family-- perhaps even inside it, since it wasn’t like he talked about insecurities with his brothers. He had a sneaking suspicion that Priamus just liked talking to people and Gawain wasn’t anything special. This was fine, mostly. It was also fine that, as unfortunate conversations with Aggravaine had made him realise, his most enacted method of befriending people was sleeping with them. It was totally fine. 

He hadn’t hooked up with anyone since the disastrous events a month prior. It could have been the uncomfortable aftertaste of bad decisions, or an illogical attempt to make up for the things he had said to Aggravaine. Possibly also at play was the introverted fugue-state into which he had entered. He knew, vaguely, that some adrenaline might be nice, but unfortunately that involved things like Talking To People He Knew, or worse, Talking To Strangers In A Non-Work Capacity-- which seemed suddenly daunting. “Priamus, can you catch being an introvert?”

Priamus paused in whatever he had been saying, which had gone unnoticed by Gawain. “What? You think that’s the matter with Lucius?”

“No, I think that’s the matter with me.”

“What?” There was a note in Priamus’ voice that sounded notably non-easygoing. Gawain frowned and tried to parse it. “Uhh… okay. Maybe.”

He was annoyed. Oh. Gawain had interrupted his problems to talk about his own problems. Because it was Priamus, he probably wasn’t too hurt, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t noticed. “Shit, fuck, sorry. I’m an asshole, I know. Lucius. Could you win his wife back?”

“Gawain, what the fuck? Helen?”

“Oh, that’s a bad idea. That’s like the Parent Trap. I take that back.”

This earned him a faint chuckle, which was a relief. “Helen moved to Istanbul last week anyway. God, I wish I could move to Istanbul.”

Gawain perked up. He was on solid ground once more. “My second cousin twice removed or something is from Istanbul! Sangremore. I got to stay with him for like a month the summer before I went to that shitty boarding school in Rome. He’s the coolest. You should move to Istanbul to hang out with my cousin Sangremore.”

There was a pause. Faint sounds of chewing were audible over the line. “Really? If I moved to Istanbul could I stay with your cousin Sangremore while I’m getting my feet on the ground?”

The world shifted slightly. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, yeah, totally. Oh, shit, the chili oil was a _mistake._ Uh-- yeah, honestly, I’m kind of done with this place. I’ve been here for-- oh God, when did I leave Bologna?”

“Eighteen thirty-two,” said Gawain dryly. 

There was snickering on the other end. “Uh-huh. I’m trying to think who I know in Istanbul. Uh… I have a friend from Cairo who moved to Turkey, but I think she’s somewhere in the countryside. Boring. Can I stay with your cool cousin?”

“Uh… I… I guess?” There were no reasons that sprang to mind for why Sangremore _wouldn’t_ be alright with putting Priamus up on his couch for a week, other than the fact that Gawain thought it very unjust that anyone other than him should get to sleep on Sangremore’s couch for a week. When he had been thirteen, Sangremore had been seventeen or eighteen, and had seemed like the single coolest person Gawain would ever meet. It was now some time later and this impression had yet to be broken. Gawain never texted him because he didn’t feel as though he had earned the right to know his phone number, even though they had seen each other every so often at family functions up until the time Gawain had left his mother. 

“Is he, like, chill?”

“Do you mean is he gay?”

“Yeah.”

Various memories flashed through Gawain’s brain of teenaged Sangremore very kindly and with a minimum amount of awkwardness explaining certain things about the world to him. Morgause hadn’t allowed him a smartphone until high school, and computer access had always been monitored. Although the graphic detail had probably been somewhat excessive, Sangremore’s explanations had been nonetheless helpful. “He’s pan. You’d like him, seriously. He’s my favourite relative who’s actually related to me. He has a job at some international shipping company and does drag in his spare time.”

Around the sounds of unfortunate chewing, Priamus laughed. “Sounds like a good time. If you’re serious, I’d love if you could shoot him a text for me. Or give me his insta or something. Or email, if he’s weird.”

Gawain communicated with Sangremore exclusively through excessively formal emails and faithful comments on his Instagram posts. Sangremore generally reacted with emojis. He decided not to share any of this, because it made him sound like a stupid dweeb who hero-worshipped his cousin, which he very much suspected he was. “Yeah, I can give you his insta.” Certain facts aligned themselves and caught up with him. “Wait, you’re really serious.”

“Yeah?”

Three minutes to 1 in the morning. Gawain scrunched his eyes shut and tried to imagine it was the fan that was giving him a headache. “You’re just going to-- leave? With no job and no one you know?”

There was a pause. Then, in a voice which would have sounded confident coming from anyone except himself, Priamus said, “I’ve done it before. And I’ve been here too long. I’m bored.”

People on the move were the most interesting type of people, Gawain had always thought. They had lots to say and lots to do and knew things you didn’t. They had perspective. People on the move were fun. And they always moved on. “That’s cool. I’m-- I wish I could do that. Just disappear in the night, haha.”

“Not into the night,” Priamus said, sounding slightly injured. “I’ll give it a month. Lucius is probably too scared of me to try anything dumb. And in the meantime I’ll say goodbye to everyone.”

“Right,” said Gawain, “goodbye.”

The following day was a Friday, and after everyone had gotten out of class, the Orkneys gathered on the landing of the fifth floor and helped Gareth move out. It was a jovial affair tinged with a tad of depression on Gawain’s part, and as he was the only one in a desolate glump and also the only one to possess a car, he was appointed as the driver. It would take, they estimated, three car rides to transport everything from Gareth’s room to his new flat with Lynette. This was not because he possessed a lot of items-- it was because Gringolet, Gawain’s car, had a hole in the floor in the back covered with cardboard, and the trunk leaked. A minimum of belongings could safely be placed in it in one go. 

Gareth and Lynette were already at the empty apartment, marking where various things would go and hopefully doing other apartment things, which left the rest to be transported with the boxes one at a time, as only the passenger seat was open and extant. There were four people to transport, but Mordred said mysteriously that he could make his own way, which meant he had a scooter but wanted to make it sound cooler than it was.

What was left was a situation akin to the classic dilemma, in which a farmer with a fox, rabbit and a cake (or fruit or fruitcake or bread or something, he couldn’t remember) must cross a river with only one item at a time. Gawain’s observations on this matter had not been appreciated, and were in fact, “a slur, Gawain what the fuck is wrong with you.” He was truly learning so much every day. What he learned today was that he was going to try not talking for the rest of the morning. 

“I’m going first?” asked Gaheris, the metaphorical fox, not to be confused with the literal fox, who was to all available knowledge still in his dumpster-y home.

“According to the chart.” There was a chart. “It’s a good chart,” Gawain added, in case Agravaine was in listening range.

Gaheris got in with a distant and vaguely disgruntled neutrality from which it was impossible to diagnose the now common Gawain-resentment from the standard Gaheris Gaherisness. 

He made the first trip. It wasn’t bad-- fifteen minutes of actual driving, followed by half an hour of trying to get Gringolet out of the gutter in the garage complex. Conversation went in three phases. The first, awkward silence, which was interrupted only by Gringolet sounds, which resembled the creaks of an old sailing ship and, occasionally, balloons popping. Gawain spent this silence suppressing the urge, which comes upon all of us when put in a driver's seat, to channel a soccer mom and ask questions like, “so how is school going?” 

This would not be a good idea in the current political climate. 

Gaheris spoke finally, startlingly. “Are you going to move out too?” 

“...If you really didn’t want me there,” Gawain offered tentatively, very much hoping Gaheris would not take him up on this offer. He couldn’t fit a mattress in the back of Gringolet and besides it lacked even the self pitying melodrama of his current Hester Prynne situation.

Phase two was worse than the first, decisively. 

Gaheris pondered this. “I don’t want Agravaine to be in charge. He can’t drive.”

“...right.” For a moment Gawain was unsure if this counted as being mean, and decided it wasn’t, seeing as it was factually true that Agravaine couldn’t drive and was therefore, given the assumed that ability to drive was the only factor deciding family leadership competence, he was more qualified and thus invited to stay.

At this point they had reached the garage complex and were pulling in.

“Mordred’s been talking to mom,” Gaheris said without lead in.

“Oh,” said Gawain, calmly jerking the steering wheel and sending the front wheels into a ditch. “Okay,” he went on, trying to extricate them and sliding the rest of the car into the ditch. 

Out of politeness or ignorance, Gaheris made no comment on their vehicular predicament. He gave no further details and Gawain did not ask for them, slipping into the third stage of silence more stunned than awkward. Stage Three lasted for half an hour of moving the car back and forth in the ditch. It was not the longest or most uncomfortable half hour Gawain had experienced that month, but it was very much both long and uncomfortable. 

They finally escaped with only a hedge and yet more wear on Gawain's fragile sanity as casualties. 

Gareth and Lynette’s apartment was on the third floor, and Gaheris refused to ride an elevator. Gawain normally would have made fun of him for this, only he was trying really hard to be nice, and it was Gareth’s apartment, and there were people around, so he swallowed hard and picked up a box end. 

“Oh,” was all Lynette said when she opened the door for them. She was wearing a pair of knee-high scarlet boots that made her look even taller than she already was(very tall), and flicked her sunglasses down to look over Gawain and Gaheris. “What are your names again? I can never keep track. Gavin? Gordon?”

“Hi Lynette,” Gawain said, setting the box down inside the door. He paused, considering playing along — no one wasn’t speaking to _Gordon_ Orkney. Gordon Orkney hadn’t said any slurs at all today — but decided against it. Lynette was smarter than that. “It’s Gawain. And Gaheris. We met two years ago.” 

“How would I know that? Whatever. Gareth!” She called over her shoulder. “Brothers!” 

“Ahh!” Gareth ran out of the kitchen with a steaming pan of soda bread in mitted hands. “Hi! Um, two seconds!” 

He disappeared back into the kitchen, assumedly to deal with the bread. Gawain shuffled in place a little. 

“Did you guys get stuck in the ditch?” Lynette stared directly at Gawain.

“What?” Gawain snapped. “No. Of course not.” Shit. Go back. “I mean,” he looked at Gaheris. “Only a little.” 

“Hm. I thought so. Everybody does.”

That made him feel slightly better. “Did you?”

“No.” She turned to fix something on the wall. “But I’m just a really good driver, so.” 

Gawain had been in Lynette’s car before. He was reminded of a certain hill behind campus and a certain 60 miles per hour speed limit, which Lynette had far surpassed. “Right.”

The dead air was saved by Gareth and four slices of warm soda bread. 

“Thanks for coming to help,” Gareth smiled. “I really appreciate it!”

“Yeah of course!” Gawain said, a little too enthusiastically and a little too soon after Gareth had started talking. There was a devastating beat. 

“It’s no problem, bro,” Gaheris said, turning to Gareth. Gawain smiled tensely and took a bite of his soda bread. Gordon Orkney wouldn’t need his younger brothers to save him from fucking up conversations. 

They ate and made small talk with the grim determination of lost hikers sawing off limbs to survive, and Gawain eventually managed to escape back to Gringolet without further incident. The drive back felt unbelievably briefer than the trip there. Being perceived had not been so exhausting when he was being perceived with approval.

Speaking of being perceived with disapproval, the chart dictated his next passenger to be one Clarissant “Claire” Orkney. Things had started off on a good note and then someone (Gawain. It was Gawain) had lit the instrument that played that note on fire and then she’d been revealed as his secret sister and immediately witnessed a huge fight. With that in mind, things could be worse. 

Probably? They could probably be worse. Something to look forward to. 

“Hi Claire!” said Gawain, trying too hard. 

“Hey!” said Claire, who was maybe trying a little more than she needed to also. “All loaded?”

“Yup!”

It felt like being in a commercial in the worst way possible. He was sure he was just slightly too loud but even more sure that an attempt to ameliorate this would swing way too far the other way. Man In Furniture Commercial And/Or Cult was preferable to indigent squeak.

"I feel like a cab driver," he joked weakly, aware that the closest he was getting to a charming smile was a pained grimace. Claire chuckled more out of awkward sympathy than humour.

She shut the car door, fiddling with a phone charger in merciful distraction while they pulled out of the parking garage.

Gawain just had to manage to not say anything awful for fifteen minutes. It was too soon to drive Claire away too, when she’d only just arrived. This thought led to other thoughts, as it is unfortunately wont to happen. Thoughts about notes to begin or to end on. 

“I’m sorry you got here-- now. It’s--” _not usually like this. I’m not usually like this_. Except for the fact that, as far as Gawain could ascertain, he actually was. “Less than ideal. I’m sorry.”

He’d said _I’m sorry_ a number of times the past few weeks and it didn’t seem to have gotten him very far any time. The point wasn’t, ostensibly, to get anything, he knew that, but still. 

She nodded, like she was about to accept his apology and move on. Instead, she said: “What are you apologizing for exactly?”

“Ahh-- well. You know, everything that’s-- the drama,” he finished lamely, wincing at his own words. It was probably dismissive and definitely spreading the blame unfairly when it mostly fell on him. “I mean, everything’s sort of unsettled.” He drummed his fingers nervously on the steering wheel, staring resolutely at the road. “I’ve been sort of an asshole,” he admitted finally, and fell silent. 

She nodded again, considering this, when it was clear he wasn’t saying anything else. “Thank you, then." She paused, gave a small smile. "Honestly, you don't need to apologize to me! I think other people might like to hear it though."

“They don’t actually,” he admitted. “Not-- not recently no.” Paused. “Thank you. I’m glad I haven’t done anything awful to you and not realized.”

“So am I,” she agreed, light humour a bit strained but not quite as painful. “Really in terms of awkward timing, I’m the one who just showed up out of the blue, uninvited.”

“Well, not--” technically yes, she had strictly speaking just shown up. And also technically he lacked jurisdiction at the moment to make sweeping statements for anyone who wasn’t himself. “I mean, when we left my brothers and I just showed up here to impose on relatives we’d never met-- not that you’re imposing like that, not that you’re--” Great. “Obviously you aren’t imposing. I just meant that sometimes with family stuff, it’s like that.”

“Hm.” Claire pursed her lips. “I do hope I’m not. Imposing on you all, that is. I know it isn’t the best time as you said, and you don’t know me very well,”

She trailed off. The conversation seemed a bit familiar but in the opposite direction. Somehow, this did not make it simpler to say the correct things. He tried his hand at validation, which was what he was currently seeking. You got what you gave, right? That was some kind of a spiritual principle. “You’re really not imposing.” This was true. She was family, even if only very recently. “And-- I mean, if you’re feeling a little, uh, lost, you’re welcome to sit in on some of my classes? Teachers love me, I can get them to agree.”

“Oh, dunk. Gucci.” She stopped. “Sorry that wasn’t, what a normal human person would--”

“No, it was good, I got it,” Gawain said encouragingly. He had no idea what she was talking about or, currently, what words meant. “Dunk. Yup.”

She gave him a look that, despite never having been directed at Gawain before, was immediately recognizable as _you sound like you are forty years old._ “Uhuh. Cool.” She paused. “Oh, you really, uh-- you really didn’t have a childhood, huh.”

“I super did. I had like, five tamagotchi,” he lied. “And thirty golden retrievers.”

There was a moment of silence. When, stopped at a traffic light, he glanced over at Claire, her lips were pursed and her brow furrowed. “If it makes you feel any better,” she said, slowly, “I don’t mean this as a compliment to Morgause, but the best two years of my life were the years I lived with her. That’s really-- uh-- I don’t mean that as an approval rating. So-- uh-- like recognizes like, even if it’s different kinds of like.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly, visions of ending up in the ditch again dancing across the road in front of them. “You don’t have to answer-- you don’t have to, but, what did she, you know--”

“Say about you?”

“Yeah.” 

“Uh. Captain of everything. Student government. Straight As. Everyone loved you. Perfect son.” She gave a light chuckle. “And a few comments about how it was a bit of a surprise you were a son, but oh, one adjusts-- she did adopt _me_ , though. I’ll say that. I was a teenager in the foster system out as a girl and she adopted me. That’s my one compliment.”

“She probably figured, historically, you would turn out trans anyway,” Gawain theorized numbly, slowing to a stop at a red light. He ran his hands through his hair, processing everything with the speed and exactness of a calculator submerged in molasses. “Fuck,” he said finally, leaning foreward onto the steering wheel, hands folded over his head. 

Claire grimaced. “Hey, Gawain, uhm, the horn is scaring the other cars. And the light is green.” 

“Shit. Fuck.” He pushed himself off of the wheel, slammed his foot on the accelerator, and pretended not to notice Claire clutching at the handle above the window for safety. What he wanted to say was _God, I’m such a failure_ , but opted not to do this, because he had a vague sense that the current conversation should be Claire Time. Gawain Time was a 24/7 operation and perhaps should be cut back a bit. “Uh-- I-- it must have been a bit of an odd shadow to live in. I’m sorry. I’m glad you came to find us.”

Tentatively, she took her hand off of the handle, and studied him for a moment. “Thank you. I’m glad I did too, even with--” She raised one eyebrow, doing finger quotes. “‘--the drama.’ Oh, this is a really nice building!”

They had arrived. Unpacking occurred. This time Lynette, who believed mainly in bullying men and men-aligned persons, was perfectly cordial.

They unloaded boxes and Claire received her bread allotment graciously. Gawain was sent back unceremoniously, without bread or painful small talk. Win some, lose some. 

Final installment: Aggravaine. This was the trip Gawain had been dreading, because the two of them had been scrupulously, painfully polite to each other over the course of the last month-- a state of affairs that had only seen success because Aggravaine had been off practically every day doing derivatives or whatever it was he had suddenly started doing for pay. He returned late at night and left-- not early, not by usual Gawain standards, but by Aggravaine standards 9 was the crack of dawn.

So it was with trepidation that Gawain returned to his seat, checking the mirror to see if the logo on the steering wheel was still vaguely imprinted on his face. It wasn’t. Eventually the door swung open, Aggravaine flopped down into shotgun, and the drive commenced.

“So, uh, how’s school going?” asked Gawain, when even soccer-mom tendencies were looking more appealing than continued silence.

Agravaine looked at him like he’d grown additional limbs or turned electric blue. “Fine.” 

A chilling response. “That’s good.” Stop talking. “Uh, you haven’t been around much recently.”

“Been going to a lot of parties.”

“What?”

“I’m joking, chill. Your brand is safe.”

What had the world come to? Why was every conversation now an uphill battle? This was, hypothetically, a joke. Unfortunately, Aggravaine rarely made jokes, and Gawain was unprepared to deal with them. None of his pre-planned joke responses seemed applicable in this situation. “My brand, uh-- I mean-- I would be a little worried if you started going to a bunch of parties, but not because of my brand.”

Agravaine didn’t look overly impressed. “Right. Cool.” 

Gawain struggled to recall all the functional people he knew and theorized what they would do. _What would Gordon Orkney say, whore_? asked his self-flagellating internal thoughts. Unfortunately Gawain didn’t know enough about Gordon Orkney to say. He’d have to ask Lynette for more details. “I mean, it just seems, like you said, that isn’t-- something you’d enjoy. None of my business. Sorry.” 

There was some disgruntled creaking as Aggravaine adjusted himself on the ancient seat. Then he said, “‘sfine. I know what you meant. I’ve been-- uh-- actually, I’ve been over at a friend’s apartment most nights.”

“Oh,” said Gawain, trying to not sound surprised. He failed. “That’s nice.” _Don’t ask who. Don’t ask who._ “Who…?” 

“Just a friend.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Aggravaine softened. “I mean-- we’re just friends. I think. For now. And I don’t think you know him. You would hate him, though! So that’s something.”

“Oh. Well--” He readjusted the mirror. “Well, now I will like him, to prove you wrong.”

“You don’t even know him.”

“I love the idea of him,” Gawain insisted. “You know, because I’m an ally.” 

Silence hung on a tight-rope for one perilous moment. Then it snapped and Aggravaine collapsed into giggles which, contagious, spread to Gawain as well. When he’d finally caught his breath, Aggravaine said, “You’re a really shitty ally. You should talk to my brother. He’s bi and transmasc and a Women and Gender Studies major. You might learn some things.”

“You forgot aromantic,” Gawain said sniffily, but the effect was dampened by the relief in his voice. The tension seemed to have eased slightly-- more than it had over the last month, at least.

“Really? You never told me that one.”

Gawain shrugged. There were a lot of things he didn’t tell his brothers, on average. This one had always seemed irrelevant. “It’s the most confusing. I think I’m aro. Or I could just be too busy. You know, normal questions.”

“Yeah, okay. Right.” He checked his phone. “I see it.” 

“Huh?”

“I see it.”

Gawain shrugged. “Okay.” This possibly would have been more validating if it had been a recent realisation, but as it was all it did was drive home that it had taken at least four years to tell his brothers he thought he was aro. “Cool, uh-- oh, fuck it-- take this whatever way you want, but I’m really happy you’re doing okay. You seem-- a lot more at ease than I’ve seen you, like, ever.”

“I am, I think. Uh, thank you. You--” he paused, probably searching for a better way to say _Have been a miserable bastard lately, but it’s probably good for you._ “Thanks.” 

“Garage,” announced Gawain, in the same tone with which he imagined diplomats of ages past had announced to beleaguered kings that the long war was over and peace had arrived.

“Watch out for the ditch,” Agravaine said with apparent innocence.

“I see it. I know how to drive.” He managed to escape the ditch. “I already-- I defeated the ditch already. Earlier.”

“Lynette bet you would.” 

“And who defended my honour?”

Car door opened. Aggravaine climbed out. Car door shut. “Uh, no one. We’re all, uh-- honestly, we’re a little worried about you. Three-time ditch errors seemed pretty likely.”

“Well, it was very trusting of you all to get into the passenger's seat anyway,” Gawain remarked, shelving everything else about the comment somewhere on the to-be-read shelf of his brain. “And, uh, thank you for chatting.”

Aggravaine swung open the trunk and grabbed one of the large cardboard boxes, heedless of the questionable stain Gringolet had left on it. “‘Course,” he said gruffly. “You’re my brother. Come on, let’s steal more of Lynette’s soda bread.”

That day Lancelot went rollerblading with Dinadan and Cerise, and in the evening he baked cupcakes with his mother. It was a nice day. 


	3. Frequent Flyers

> Dear Cousin Sangremore,  
> I hope this email finds you well, as I send nothing but the most courteous and complimentary of greetings. I myself am enjoying the status of being the recipient of good times, so you need not worry, for all is well on this side of the pond (as it were). I am writing to you both to express my hope that the world is treating you well and to inquire as to whether you might possibly have the space and/or bandwidth to put up my dear friend for a week or so. He is moving to Constanbul because he got caught by his boss being too friendly with a barista he was supposed to be threatening. He has many skills including but not limited to: crime, event planning, covering up crime, very good in bed (according to rumour), intimidation, and a bachelor’s degree in Moral and Ethical Philosophy. He has money but would probably prefer to pay you with any of the above talents excepting of course the sex one. Please let me know if this would be a possibility; he is very interested in moving to Istantinople for its engaging nightlife, interesting history, urban culture, etc. I myself am doing well, as I said, but you don’t want to hear about me! I wish you the best.   
> Best wishes and wishing you only the best,  
> Gawain Orkney

> hey gawain   
> glad to hear shits going well! u should bug me more im so bad abt staying in contact but id love to hear whats been up with u. re ur friend, totally, np. my gf sebile is gonna be in greece (ugh) for like the next two months so uhhhh ya i’ll have a spare room in the flat. send me ur guys contact info and ill link up with him. bye!

The trouble with deciding you are going to be taught how to be a good person by an ex-friendly-acquaintance is venue. Lancelot and Gawain, having decided to exchange information about morality and coffee-making, stumbled through an awkward week of not acknowledging either because the opportunity did not present itself. On Gawain’s part, this was because Lancelot had not been put on shift behind the bar as of yet; on Lancelot’s part this was because Gawain looked like a zombie extra in a low-budget horror flick, and ‘hey, are you okay?’ felt too invasive of a question when the answer was so obviously no. 

That morning saw their shared shift start much the same as the last ones had, Gawain raccoon-eyed and miserable, Lancelot silent and awkward. It would likely have continued along the same vein if not for the timely and noisy emergence of Kay from the back room.

“Goodmorning Kay,” Gawain said, starting off with an attempt at false chipperness and giving up halfway through, so the tone drifted off at the end like a question. It didn’t occur to Lancelot to say something similar till the moment had passed, so he just nodded slightly to indicate he was awake and tried to look busy with something. The only thing in range was a cup, which he picked up and pretended to inspect.

“Lancelot,” Kay barked, without acknowledging Gawain’s greetings, “put that cup down and stop pretending you know what a beverage is.”

“Uh, yes sir,” said Lancelot quickly, who panicked and tried to salute without putting down the cup and accidentally threw it over his shoulder. He heard it hit a wall with a plastic clatter, and opted to remain completely still. “Sorry.”

Kay stared at him for a moment in bemused disgruntledness, as if to determine whether this was an act of insubordination or genuine incompetence. He must have settled on the later, because with one parting and terrifying expression he let the incident pass. “On a somewhat related note, we have practically more baristas than customers and you two fail to impress.”

“Sorry,” said Lancelot again. He was reasonably sure that Kay wasn’t allowed to fire him, but was nonetheless very concerned about the direction of the conversation. Gawain just nodded silently, looking a tad catatonic.

“So we’re going to have you fight to the death,” Kay continued, with no change of expression. “I have a pile of axes out back, take your pick. I expect you out front in ten minutes to duel.”

“That seems very reasonable,” said Gawain.

“Don’t be a kissass, Gawain. Just for that, you don’t get an axe.” Kay crossed his arms and favoured Lancelot with an expression that indicated his face was preferable to Gawain’s. “You two are our most artistically inclined employees.”

This seemed unfair to Lancelot, who was in his final year of a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts and had a closet filled with paintings. He cast a surreptitious look at Gawain, who seemed just as confused as he did. “I don’t— know what a pencil is,” Gawain said.

“You know, you have your—” He waved a hand dismissively. “Your pictures. People seem to like those.”

“My instagram?”

“Whatever you want to call it, you have a lot of followers. That’s what this coffee shop needs.”

“This coffee shop needs instagram thirst traps?” Gawain questioned. “I mean, okay.” 

Kay narrowed his eyes. “For whatever reason you have internet popularity. He has some sort of talent apparently. Just combine skill sets here. Make fliers or something. Use your— your snapped book.”

“You’re like thirty. Why are you pretending to be eighty?” Gawain asked, and was silenced with a glance. “I mean, yes sir.” 

“Right. Well, uh— I can’t force you to do this after hours, because I respect the rights of workers, so I’ll take over your shift for the rest of today. Enjoy your—” A furious waving of fingers proceeded. “Artistic voyage.”

He chased them out from behind the counter and, bemused, the two of them filed out front to the bench on the sidewalk outside. Gawain turned to Lancelot. “Why did he say it like that? With the— the finger wiggling?”

“I think,” Lancelot said slowly, “I think he is under the impression I draw porn and you post nudes.”

“Do you?”

“What?” He flushed and shot Gawain a concerned look. He didn’t look particularly judgemental, just curious. “I mean I— we draw studies and stuff— it’s not, like, it’s not _porn._ It’s _art._ ”

“Oh?”

“I—” he sputtered, “the Instagram thirst trap guy can’t, can’t judge me for my not safe for work Twitter, its like— stones, glass horses—”

“ _Not safe for work Twitter?_ ” Gawain said, his eyebrows creeping towards his hairline. 

Lancelot couldn’t figure out if his tone was gleeful or incredulous, and felt a bit defensive. “I don’t— I mean— look, I take commissions as long as they’re _tasteful_ , and it’s, like, it’s digital painting, I think that makes it not porn. I mean, do you think Michelangelo did porn?”

“Hm, maybe in his free time,” Gawain said mildly. 

“Are you calling David porn?” Lancelot said, aghast. Four years’ of art history classes were screaming in his head about the disrespect of the youth.

Gawain waved a hand. “Not Michelangelo’s. Maybe Donatello’s, you know, he’s got that saucy little feather.” 

“Yeah,” said Lancelot, “uhuh. Right. Uhm— we should— stop talking about porn and make our own. I mean— oh, God. You know what I mean. Promotional material, Jesus Christ.”

In an act of great mercy and restraint, Gawain merely nodded. “Yeah, start brainstorming. Do you have, like, paper?” 

Caught unawares, Lancelot said, “I have my sketchbook.” He hastily reconsidered. It wasn’t that there was anything horribly embarrassing in it, but it was _his._ It was personal. And, he reminded himself, Gawain wasn’t his friend. “Which you can’t look at. No. I have no paper.”

“Oh. Uh. Okay, that’s fair. We could go to the library and steal paper from the printers then? And they have vending machines.”

He said this last part as if it was quite important. “To also steal from?” said Lancelot, not bothering to disguise his interest in the possibility of mild crime.

“I mean,” Gawain began, slightly surprised. “I guess if the opportunity arises, it is a victimless crime. Do you know how to steal from a vending machine?”

“No,” he admitted.

“I don’t either. Which is— probably for the best. Ah, honestly.” He cast Lancelot an unreadable glance. “Actually, one time my little brother almost got in big trouble for robbing a vending machine. You remember when the Maths building caught fire that one time?”

“Oh my god. Yes?” Lancelot asked, gathering his things up to walk to the library. “How did— how did it escalate to that? Like a— like a feed a mouse a cookie thing? Give a— give your brother a vending machine theft and he’ll ask for arson?”

For one of the first times he had seen, Gawain blushed and averted his eyes. “Ah, yeah, you know. Forget about it. I shouldn’t have mentioned it, it’s not a— let’s not talk about the time the Maths building caught fire. Uhm. Okay, so, what’s our PR tactic?”

He was very obviously changing the subject, but Lancelot was generally a nice and easily pushed around person so he let it happen. “I don’t really know. Uh, just, get the word out? I’ve never advertised anything. I don’t know. My cousin Bors was once one of those sign spinning people for a sandwich shop and he had to wear a costume. I don’t want to do that.”

“...Noted.” Gawain stood and hummed under his breath. “What about flyers? That’s easy enough, right? I _do_ know how to get the printing machines in the cafeteria to print for free. Does that help?”

“Well, we do have a spending limit of zero dollars, for this project, so yeah, that helps. I can design a flyer in photoshop then you can— crime print it.” 

“Crime printing is, in fact, my favourite crime,” said Gawain cheerily. “Shall we?”

In the end it took them the rest of their shift to get photoshop to load on Lancelot’s clunky computer. They spent an hour or two fake-bickering over fonts and slogans while Lancelot studiously ignored every suggestion Gawain gave, and Gawain filled him in on the latest Priamus gossip, which for reasons unclear to Lancelot included alligators. 

“Not just the alligators,” Gawain said, “Priamus has a whole bucket list.”

“Uhuh?”

“He’s leaving town, you know.”

“I didn’t.” He barely understood who Priamus was, as it happened. He just sort of existed, and the reasons for him existing in Lancelot’s vicinity were unclear to him. “Like, for good?”

“Yeah, he’s moving to Constantinople.”

Lancelot frowned. “I— you mean— what?”

“Istanbul? Major city in Turkey? Straddles the Bosphorus river and is a key economic stronghold in Eastern Europe slash the Middle East, known as a crossroads for many political winds and a cosmopolitan cultural center?”

Lancelot had reached up his hand to mock-punch him before remembering that that was the sort of thing friends did, and he had made it very clear that Gawain was no longer his friend. He stretched out his wrist awkwardly instead. “Ah, yes, IR major. You said— you said Constantinople, though. You know it’s not Constantinople?”

“I know it’s not Constantinople, Lancelot,” said Gawain breezily. “Istanbul not Const— oh, I like the comic sans!”

“We are _not_ having comic sans.”

“Please?”

“I could compromise on a sans serif font,” Lancelot offered generously.

“I don’t know what that means.” 

In the end they went with a Gothic type-face, which was nowhere near comic sans but was, in Gawain’s words, aesthetic. Another half an hour passed in trying to get Lancelot’s USB drive working, and by the time Gawain got to working his magic on the printing machines, the halls were thronged with students getting out of afternoon classes. It was for this reason that they ran into Dinadan, or rather, he ran into them. 

He apparated next to them with an amiable smile. “Lancelot and Gawain,” he observed, as Gawain surreptitiously rattled the printer. “My bosom friends. Funny to see you two together outside of your little cafe.”

Lancelot’s heart sank. It was not that he didn’t like Dinadan; he liked Dinadan very much and knew it was reciprocal. Unfortunately, Dinadan was possibly the only person on the planet who hated Gawain more than Cerise did— hated him in a way it had taken him a while to notice. At first he had been under the impression that Dinadan held Gawain in bored disdain, as one might regard a moldy apple at the back of the fridge. But the casual comments added up if you paid attention.

“Hi, Dinadan,” said Gawain, with a lack of emotion to rival slabs of granite. “How were your classes? Things going well in the Poli Sci department?”

Dinadan gave him a bright grin. “Going great! I’m on track to graduate this semester— unless something really wonky happens, of course. It would really suck to get everything disrupted at the last second, don’t you think?”

“Wow, what a random and unspecific comment,” Gawain said flatly. “Yeah Dinadan, that would suck.” 

Lancelot thought briefly about the benefits of killing them both, out of mercy and a duty to the rest of the world. “Uh,” he said, and then couldn’t think of a follow up. 

Sliding his hands into his pockets and ignoring Lancelot, Dinadan said, “So I see from the flyers you two are on coffee shop business? Best of luck with that. Must be nice that work lets you hang out with people.” 

“It’s lovely!” Gawain made an attempt at a smile, but it looked a little lackluster. “Well, I’m sure you know— you’ve got it all figured out with your band!”

“Hmm?” He raised his eyebrows in a show of confusion that Lancelot suspected was not entirely real. It was not entirely clear what conversation they were having, but the faux-casual stances and uncomfortable small talk indicated that _something_ was happening. He wanted to drop through a hole in the earth and emerge in a simultaneously Dinadan-less and Gawain-less alternate dimension. 

“I mean,” Gawain continued blithely, with an expression a little more like his old self, “even after you all graduate, they aren’t going anywhere! That’s the charm of a record deal, I guess. Built-in friends, yeah?”

Lancelot was looking back and forth between them with the manic bobbing of a broken bobblehead, feeling like a spectator at a sporting match for reasons he was utterly unable to articulate. He searched desperately for something to say to break the tension. “Uh— did you know that armadillos carry leprosy?” Oh no. 

“Oh, that’s a great fact, Lancelot,” said Dinadan cheerfully, clearly beating Gawain to the punch. “I should be on my way, though. Gawain, I’m— I’m a little hurt at the implication you think my friends are only there for business reasons?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that at all, but I’m sorry you feel that way. Maybe you should talk to them about it?” 

Dinadan shot Lancelot a look of confused injury that Lancelot did not entirely buy. His heart was sinking rapidly. He liked Dinadan, and if he didn’t exactly _like_ Gawain he also didn’t want him to be upset. And upsetting was the most relevant word to describe the current conversation. Before he could think of a reason to drag Gawain away, Dinadan said, “Shit, you’re right. It’s funny the little insecurities you have that you don’t even notice! Good thing I make friends by _talking_ to them. Helps me keep them. Bye, you two!”

They both stood in mute silence for a second as Dinadan skipped off down the hallway. Lancelot was scared to move, breathe, speak, or do anything that indicated he was alive at all. Gawain gave a long sigh and crossed his arms. “Jesus Christ, I need to learn to cry on command.”

“I can cry on command,” said Lancelot, because he didn’t have anything else to say. “The— printer is done printing. What the fuck just ha— what the fuck just happened?”

“Uhm,” said Gawain, “so, uh, does it help if I say not to worry about it?”

“No. I’m always worried.” 

Gawain twisted his mouth and gave him a considering look before turning to collect their newly-printed flyers. He seemed, oddly, less troubled than he had most days that week. “You’re not mad at me? I kinda thought you’d be mad at me.”

“I will be perfectly honest,” said Lancelot, spreading his hands awkwardly. “I don’t know enough about what just happened to make a judgement. So no?” 

“I’ll tell you about it while we put up these flyers? So no one can hear me being a bitch in the cafeteria?”

Lancelot blinked, not anticipating transparency. “Okay, uh yeah. That’s fair, wouldn’t— wouldn’t want the pizza hut to hear you or anything.” 

They made a hasty exit to the courtyard outside and cast about for handy lamp poles and other vertical surfaces. Technically their shift had ended, but neither pointed it out. “So, uh, I know you’re friends with him,” Gawain began, which was not a promising direction. 

“Yeah.”

“And I don’t want to be, like— he’s not a bad person or something, I’m not saying he sucks.” He slapped a flyer on the wall of the student union and pulled out a roll of tape they had purloined at the undergraduate resources office. “We just hate each other.”

“Oh,” said Lancelot, who didn’t really hate anyone even when they did suck. “Well, is there— a reason?” 

“Kinda?” Gawain shot him a guilty look. “He’s— you know he’s a political science major.”

“Uh huh?” Lancelot looked deeply skeptical. “Do you hate… all? Political science majors?”

“Yes.” There was a pause. “That’s a joke. No, no, it’s just that I’m in IR, and there’s a lot that’s cross-listed, so we’ve been in at least one class together practically every semester for the last four years. This isn’t anything, I’m sorry, that’s not the reason we hate each other.”

“I feel like I’m missing something, yeah,” Lancelot admitted. “Bad first impression?”

“Oh, yeah, we’ve gotten into arguments about random things in pretty much every class,” Gawain agreed, “despite having nearly identical politics? But then it got worse with the whole Tristan thing. Iseult too, but I don’t know her as well. Uh, and also I’ve said some really shitty things to him, I will be honest.” He stopped in the midst of taping another flyer onto a nearby tree and waved a finger at Lancelot. “But it’s mutual. I swear this is mutual.”

“Like, a consensual rivalry. That makes sense,” Lancelot said, nodding thoughtfully. “I guess if you’re both having fun.” 

Gawain stared at him. “ _Fun_ is not— I just mean— look, he called me an axe murderer in the making once? I wouldn’t say it’s light-hearted.”

“That doesn’t sound fun at all,” Lancelot agreed. “I mean, I don’t think you’re an axe murderer, just— for the record.”

“Thank you Lancelot, I appreciate that,” Gawain said earnestly. “Actually, I’m not even joking, I genuinely appreciate that. I kinda— I don’t know, it does rub me the wrong way when people think I— I don’t like people. I really do like people. Not just the ones I know.”

“It seems like the better you know people the less you like them,” Lancelot reflected, with what he would grow to recognize in the coming moments was, in fact, too much honesty. 

“What? No, I— I like everyone, pretty much. Except Dinadan, of course. I don’t— what?”

“Nevermind. I don’t know what I was saying,” lied Lancelot, lyingly. It hadn’t been nice of him. It _had_ been true, to the best of his knowledge, but that didn’t mean he should say it. He pointed left out of the courtyard and down to the mall. “Should we— I mean, there are a lot of buildings and stuff there. We should go— hey, are you alright?”

Gawain was still standing by the tree, looking at him with a hollow, confused expression. “People keep telling me I’m awful to everyone. I don’t— I didn’t— are you under the impression I don’t want anyone to be happy?”0

“Oh no. Oh no. No?” Lancelot grimaced guiltily. “I’m sorry that was really— really harsh I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not saying— ahh.” Bad. He felt as though his insides were curdling, and also as though he wanted to give Gawain a hug, which was an incorrect instinct on many levels. “I’m really sorry.”

With a glance around to make sure there was no one nearby to witness the situation, Gawain caught up to him and, sighing, indicated they should continue on their way down the mall. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not, it was really—”

“No, seriously.” Gawain gave him a small smile. “Trust me, people have said a lot worse to me in the last month. It just kind of— hit a little close to home. I really want you to know, like, I don’t— I mean— I really do try to be nice to people. It’s easier if I don’t know them, though. It’s okay to be fake to amiable acquaintances. Does that make sense?”

“I guess that makes sense,” Lancelot said, and shut his mouth before he could ask the question he was thinking. He had a feeling it would be one of those statements he made innocuously and only later found out was quite cutting. “I really didn’t mean to say— I mean you are usually very nice. Oh look, a lamppost. I’m going to— tape the thing to the thing. Yup.” 

“Uh,” Gawain called from behind him, “cool? God, sorry. I feel like this is on me. I’ve been so awkward recently, and I— oh, Christ. I feel really bad for the conversation we had last week. Where you said you would teach me, or something. I don’t know, that’s not your responsibility, and it makes me stressed because— we’re overtime right now.”

Tape. Cut. Stick. Lancelot’s heart had started to race, which it always did when a social situation veered to the stressful. “Yeah, we can go home and finish this another time if you like. I don’t want to keep you if you’re not—”

“I’m fine, I just— sorry.” Gawain stepped up behind him and held out his bag for Lancelot to drop the tape and scissors back into. “It makes me stressed because it’s all well and good to exchange advice on the clock, but it’s 1:32 now and that’s thirty-two minutes you didn’t have to be talking to me and the last thing I want is for you to feel like you owe me your time or have a responsibility to— to better me. Phew. There you go.”

“Oh— okay.” Lancelot worked through the thought process presented. “I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m being held hostage. I haven’t uh, imparted any great truths either. I don’t mind— you know, if you want advice, that’s alright. I mean, you seem like you are— you definitely, I think, are trying, and it’s not a big deal, so yeah, it’s fine. Did that make sense? No. Sorry.” 

Stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, Gawain spun to face him. “You’re really nice,” he pronounced, as though it was a sudden realisation. “And— for what it’s worth— I’m glad we were sort of friends, even if... I know how you feel about that, don’t worry. I just want to say thank you. That’s really nice of you.”

“Oh. I’m glad— I try to be nice. We’re— we’re _sort of_ friends,” he offered generously. Then honesty, however embarrassing, compelled him to continue. “Actually, I had a great time hanging out with you today. Except for Dinadan. Dinadan was— I mean, he was Dinadan.”

Gawain snorted. “It’s a terrible affliction,” he said, “and unfortunately I suffer a similar condition called being Gawain. That’s a joke.”

“You could probably get an ice pick lobotomy for that in the 50’s,” Lancelot contributed.

“What, joking?”

He laughed. “Yeah. Yep, exactly. Also, it’s fine, I can say that because I super would have been prescribed an ice pick lobotomy if I was alive in the 50s, for like, five different things. I’m allowed.”

“That seems fair,” Gawain agreed. “Hey, apropos of nothing, if Kay wants us to do more PR next time do you want to deepfake Instragram accounts to promote our shop?”

Glancing down at the stack of papers in his hand, Lancelot saw they were almost out of flyers. “That sounds like a normal thing to do, and definitely a path to success. Yes.”

They began heading back to the shop, taping up flyers randomly as they went. The final one Gawain placed, boldly, on the front door, though what it would accomplish there was anyone's guess. They clocked out triumphantly and parted ways, both basking in the glow of Kay’s inability to find anything to snipe about. 

Lancelot went to his evening class, a three-hour studio workshop. He had very much idealised Gawain for quite a while, and then he had very much not. Now both of those phases seemed to have lost their grip. _Crush_ was clearly not a good thing for Gawain to be, but there was something in the thought of _estranged coworker_ that made Lancelot a bit sad, and so, as he sketched out the thumbnails for final portfolio pieces, he entertained the notion that perhaps _friend_ was more of an option than he had previously considered. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii so the reason this took so long is because we kind of wrote the chapters backward so we have most of the rest of the chapters written but we couldnt post them until we did this one so. yeah expect regular updates unless we die tragically of school. also comments are so so appreciated <3


	4. Dippin' Dots

Gawain had just bought three types of ice cream from the charming ice cream shack from the future when his cousin showed up to interrogate him. 

“I need to talk to you.” It was the surliest tone he’d ever heard from Yvain, who had apparated behind him with a bucket in one hand and a large jackhammer in the other. “Confess to your crimes. Confess. Confess.”

“Huh?” said Gawain, juggling several cups with a look of very slight panic. “When we were eleven I opened all of your birthday presents and replaced the one’s I wanted with other stuff then re-wrapped them. I’m so sorry.” 

“Wrong. Try again,” ground out Yvain, giving him the sharpest glare Gawain had received from him since he’d (sort of) accidentally gotten Yvain so drunk he’d missed his girlfriend’s surgery. Laudine had dumped him, once the morphine had worn off. Of course, they had gotten back together after six months, so Gawain figured no harm had been done in the end. 

Gawain took a solid moment or two to weigh how the actions he’d taken today fit in with his attempt at moral improvement and decided to take refuge in technicality. “I have done nothing illegal all day.” Oh no. That came out way more guilty-sounding than intended. “I’m just at the zoo. And I used the pass I have—” he almost said _to see you_ then decided it did cross a line. “To let in my friends, and what they do at the zoo is not my fault. Technically.”

He’d been certain that a moment before there had been no one behind him, but now there was Palomides. Behind him stood Priamus and Galahad, looking rumpled and nervous. Gawain liked Palomides, in the impersonal sort of way he liked most people he ran into, but he also feared him slightly, because he once had seen Palomides and Tristan fight, and he had the sneaking suspicion that Palomides could probably kick his ass. He took a careful step away as Palomides, who despite his talent in a fight was about as intimidating as a rabbit, looked at him skeptically. “Ah,” he said, “so you _do_ know these two.”

“Not carnally,” said Gawain, faster than he could think any statement through. “I mean not— both at once— well no— Jesus. Hi Palamedes!” 

Palomides stared at him as though he was a boring new species of insect that had been dumped at the zoo without a label. “Hi.”

“Right,” said Gawain, who had managed to collect his thoughts slightly and decided to salvage the situation with a blatant yet charming lie. “I’ve actually never met them in my life.”

“Not true; we went to the same middle school,” said Priamus with an incredible amount of smooth confidence for a statement which was, essentially, unhelpful nonsense. “You played the trombone in band.” 

“What?” said Gawain. 

“ _Trombone_?” said Yvain. 

“Also,” Priamus added brightly, “we’re dating.”

“We’re married and this is our son,” Gawain said, pointing to Galahad, who was looking less than pleased to be involved in this conversation. “It was a beautiful wedding which I did not invite Yvain to because he didn’t invite me to his and Laudine’s getting back together party.”

“Because it was you that broke us up!” Yvain protested, with a little more genuine rage than entirely pleased Gawain. “When— if— on the occasion of our marriage, I will not invite you either! Oh, look, you’ve distracted me. These are your friends, yes?”

“Eh,” Gawain said, and then decided to be nicer. “Yes.”

“Thank you,” said Priamus.

“Eh,” said Galahad. 

“We caught them,” Palomides said, crossing his arms, “trying to hoist an alligator over the fence of its enclosure.”

Galahad coughed superciliously. “You didn’t catch me. I was simply perusing the premises. I wasn’t hoisting anything.”

“You were a hoisting accomplice,” Palamedes argued. “An accessory to hoisting.”

The trouble with having made it clear that he was related to Yvain, Gawain realised, was that Priamus would take it as a carte blanche to say every ridiculous thing he wanted to say. Right now he gave Palomides a blinding grin and said, “I hoist your mom every night.”

“No he doesn’t and he’s sorry,” Gawain said quickly. 

“I don’t believe that he is sorry. He does not look sorry.”

“I am not. I’d do it again,” Priamus said, though what crime he was threatening to repeat was unclear.

“Alright, look,” Gawain broke in, attempting diplomacy. He was supposed to be good at diplomacy— he’d taken a class on diplomatic techniques and everything. “How many alligators does a zoo need? They’re probably one of your least popular animals anyway, and you have, what, four of them? Isn’t— isn’t three a nicer number? Nice round number? It’s ah, a pring.”

“Prime,” corrected Galahad.

“Right. Prime.” 

Yvain and Palomides exchanged a long, exhausted glance. “Alright,” said Yvain, “you. Galahad, right? You explain what’s going on here.”

“Right,” said Galahad, and his lips twitched. “Uh, yes, so— you may know the saying, _eni sancte spiritus et emite caelitus—_ ” He continued for some minutes. None of it was in English, but it was delivered with an impressive amount of confidence. Finally, heedless of the disbelieving stares from everyone else present, he finished: “So, it’s all alright, you see. Right?”

“That makes sense to me,” said Gawain, hoping people would just start nodding along. They didn’t. 

Yvain pointed at his cousin without looking away from the alligator crime perpetrators. “None of that from you.”

Gawain returned to his ice cream in a silent sulk, stabbing at it resentfully but managing temporary quiet. 

“So, uh,” Palomides cut in, “we’re going to blacklist you all from the zoo.”

“ _What?_ ” shrieked Gawain. “But where will I go to get ice cream of the future and look at stupid lemmings?”

“You mean lemurs,” said Palomides levelly, “and they’ll be fine without you.”

Galahad sniffed. “All lemurs exist in a parallel hell dimension at all times anyway.”

“Is that— true? According to Catholic doctrine?”

“No.”

It was a sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky. It was also 8 in the morning, so no one else was at the zoo. Casting a glance around to make sure of this, Yvain said, “Alright, this is what we’re doing. Mr. Priamus, you’re banned for attempting to steal an alligator from our enclosures. Uh, Galahad— if that’s really your name— you’re banned for talking at me in more Latin than Gawain has.”

“Ha,” said Gawain, delighted to be spared, “losers. Ha.”

“Oh, I’m not done. Gawain, you’re banned for making fun of me at my 16th birthday party.” He shot them all a vindictive grin. “I don’t mean this, I just want to say it— I hope you all die a horrible painful death. Uhm. Thank you, that was very satisfying. Gawain, have a great day. The rest of you, uh, whatever.”

“Bye,” said Palomides, and beamed at them. “Fuck off.”

“I think this is illegal,” Gawain pointed out, without much intent, as they were shepherded towards the exit. “I think it’s— what is it called.”

“No it isn’t,” Galahad said in humiliated defeat and hoping to forestall further nonsense. “Sorry Priamus. We’ll have to get an alligator some other way.”

It was Thursday. Gawain didn’t have any classes that morning, because he’d skipped them, which wasn’t something he did normally but his life had already gone to hell. The last two weeks had been mostly nothing, interspersed with bits of something. The funniest incident had concerned Instagram sockpuppets. They’d served no purpose in the end, but on the upside he and Lancelot had had a lot of fun making them, and particularly in using them to catfish predatory middle-aged men. Of the six personas they had created, “Sgoidamur” had been Gawain’s favourite, and “Henri” Lancelot’s. Both of them had unanimously decided they hated “Amurfina.”

That was the most interesting thing that had happened. He was on decent terms with Lancelot now, had been since the day they’d stuck flyers up on campus, and that was at least more than could be said for the other du Lac. Gawain had had a mortifying run-in with Lionel several days before the zoo heist— mortifying because Agravaine had been there, and because even _knowing_ Lionel was inherently embarrassing. Worse, then, to have not noticed your brother sitting at a nearby table in the cafeteria, and to have offered Lionel a chair because at least _someone_ wanted to talk to you.

The fact that he was now reduced to being grateful for the company of Lionel surely ranked somewhere on this list of horrors, but he had been in the “any port in a storm” stage of monumentally bad and mostly deserved PR. “Afternoon,” he started. That was pretty normal. It was probably afternoon. It went solidly downhill from there. 

“Hi,” said Lionel glumly, and pulled out a sandwich without being invited. “Uh, what’s been up with you?”

And wasn’t that a loaded question? “Not that much. Getting ready for finals.” Finals were not really that soon, and he definitely hadn’t been studying, but Gawain liked to think he was the sort of person that had been studying and this was the sort of thing one reached for when the real answer was, to put it plainly, a real bummer. He mustered up a small smile and an eyebrow quirk. “Nice to see you around more, though.”

The anticipated effect was immediate and gratifying, full flustered flush and nervous smile. See, he still had it. “Yeah, nice to— really nice.”

“You okay, Lionel?” said Gawain, amused. “You look a little stressed.”

“I’m awesome!” said Lionel, a bit too loudly. “I’m not stressed, I’m— you’re stressed. You’ve got— undereye bags, like a sexy poet.” 

Gawain felt his eyebrows creep to his hairline. Even by Lionel standards, this was not an impressive come-on. He decided to be merciful. “Thank you, I’m flattered that it’s writing you think I’m doing all night. What about you, have any Romantic novellas in the works?”

“More an— an erotica one.” 

This was so bad it looped around again to being funny. Managing not to laugh, he leaned forward over the table and propped his chin on one hand. “Uh huh? What’s the plot?”

“It’s ah,” Lionel seemed to be growing more confident, which was mostly misplaced but also somewhat entertaining. “It’s about this this one guy, and this other really depressed, sexy guy and they work in a coffeeshop—” 

Gawain blinked. He felt, suddenly, as though someone had poured ice water down the back of his shirt. The rest of Lionel’s pathetic rambles ignored, he said, “I’m not _depressed_ , Lionel.” 

His voice was even, but something in his tone must have conveyed his reaction, because Lionel stopped, suddenly unsure. “Oh well— you know nothing is sexier than a person who's deeply depressed,” he attempted, and it did to his credit seem more like an excuse than a profession of a deeply odd preference. This still left him, following this comment, with very little credit. 

“I’m _not_ ,” Gawain repeated, feeling more insulted than he probably should have, “depressed. I’m just— experiencing a period of melancholic ennui. Christ, Lionel, if you want someone to suck you off in the gender neutral bathroom then calling them depressed is not a great pickup line.”

“...so is it too late. Is that off the table?”

“It wasn’t on the table in the first place,” said Gawain, bored. He was lying, maybe. Hooking up with Lionel would at least be a distraction, in the way that eating an obscene amount of subpar Halloween candy would be a distraction. On the other hand, if he was honest with himself, it probably wouldn’t be very good for his self esteem given that Lionel had neither popularity nor any talent at all. “Maybe take it to the DnD club.”

“Well— that was a little harsh,” Lionel sputtered after a protracted silence. He stood awkwardly. “But okay, well, good luck with your—”

Then he shuffled off, presumably to DnD club. Gawain, still feeling irrationally out of sorts, leant back in his chair and flipped vaguely through his phone. If he wanted a more interesting hookup, he reflected, he could always hit up Tristan. Or Iseult. Or both of them, of course; however, the problem with Tristan and Iseult was that Dinadan would invariably find out and say something catty about it. There was always Ysabele, too, if he wanted something a bit more— but no, not with the Sports Situation. Talking to any of his friends seemed unbearable at the present moment. He closed his phone’s message app and tilted his chair backwards, balancing it on the hind two legs.

The following moment happened in the sort of inevitable slow motion one assumed only happens on film, until, of course, they experience it first hand. In chronological order, it happened like this: he looked up from his phone to survey the cafeteria, made immediate and unwanted eye contact with his eldest younger brother, and the chair reached tipping point and sent him backwards. Experiencing these events, they seemed almost to occur in reverse, wherein he was on ground before mortification could truly set in. Oh, but was it ever setting in. 

“Can I, like, kill you?” said Agravaine, who didn’t look any happier than he did to have overheard. “Can I set you on fire?”

“I would really appreciate it,” said Gawain, still on the floor. He was hoping if he lay very still the linoleum tiles would accept him as one of them and subsume his wretched body. 

They hadn’t talked in the three days since, which was stupid, because neither had actually done anything wrong. It wasn’t an argument, not really, but the embarrassment was strong enough that it acted like one. So now here Gawain was, forcibly expelled from his cousin’s place of work, not required in class or at his job until noon, and very reticent to go home.

So he went for a bracing morning stroll, which meant he was just sort of wandering around, really, but calling it a stroll made it seem very healthful and wholesome. It’s all about PR. He engaged himself in a mental debate about architecture to avoid thinking about anything else. It was getting pretty heated by the time he turned the corner on some quaintly shop filled street to hear someone say his name. 

He experienced a brief and horrible flash of deja vu, before momentary panic faded into recognition that, blessedly, the inquiring person was of a far less humiliating identity than feared.

“Hi Lancelot. I was just going for a normal morning stroll like one does,” he said, relief apparently overriding whatever part of the brain allowed him to speak like a normal person.

“This is something people do,” Lancelot agreed without judgement, because he was Lancelot, thank god. “My mom said I was cooped up and sent me to get donuts. Do you want— to come with? On your, you know your stroll?”

 _Sugar_ , thought Gawain. Sugar sounded very good. He had already had a lot of sugar that day, but more could never hurt. “You wouldn’t mind?”

He shook his head. “No, no, I mean— it’s much nicer than just wandering around alone.” 

Which was true, so they set off. In the wake of running into someone Gawain was pretty sure didn’t hate him, donuts became less of an actual objective and more a tentative destination for whatever meandering path their feet took them— which, because of Lancelot’s inclination towards getting distracted by things like birds or trees or even bits of particularly interesting sidewalk, was quite a long route. 

“I think being a good person is a bit like painting,” said Lancelot out of nowhere, as they stood under a poplar and admired the morning. It was crisp and sunny, and even Gawain could appreciate it. He hummed inquisitively, not wasn’t entirely sure what they were supposed to be looking at. Lancelot seemed very excited about it, though. There was a bird in the tree. Maybe that was it. 

“Some people have an eye for it. They’re self-taught, and it feels right somehow. The lines might be a little sloppy, and the colours might flow out or not be mathematically the best ones, but there’s something magical about it. It’s natural, it’s genuine, you know?” He paused, and pointed at the roots of the tree. “Squirrel.”

Gawain looked. It was indeed a squirrel. “Squirrel,” he agreed. 

“That’s a good squirrel.” Taking a moment to appreciate it, Lancelot rubbed his hands together. “Anyway. Not everyone is self-taught. Some people don’t have any natural artistic inclination at all, really, but for whatever reason they wind up in an art class and they _work_ at it. They study colour theory, they do their warmups, and every day they draw a little doodle to become better. And then by the end they can paint so realistically you can’t tell their art from reality.”

“This isn’t sounding like a ringing endorsement of self-improvement,” Gawain said. He had the vague sense Lancelot was trying to give him a pep talk. 

“No, no, I mean— look at it like this.” Launching himself away from the tree all of a sudden, Lancelot grabbed Gawain by the arm and pulled him back towards the sidewalk. “Say you’re an incredible artist. No real talent for it, not innately, but you know all the patterns to go through to make things look good. You could go into, I don’t know, marketing if you wanted. And it would be soulless and hollow and no one would really benefit from it.”

“Hmm,” said Gawain. The allegory felt slightly close to home. 

“But!” Lancelot raised a finger. “But you could also make art that looked _exactly the same_ as the art from people who were more naturally inclined to painting. And no one would know the difference. It would still make people happy. You know?” 

They walked for several more paces, listening to the sounds of the street and breathing in the air, before Gawain answered. “Yeah. I just… I know all the right things to say to people— normally, I mean, I don’t know what’s wrong with me recently— and I feel like that defeats the purpose. If you know you’re doing it, doesn’t it make it fake? Doesn’t it make it… wrong?”

Lancelot gave him a half-smile, that sly expression that he had on the rare occasions when he knew he was being clever. “Why on earth would choosing to be kind be wrong?”

“Well— you’ve got me there.” He stopped for a second. It seemed so simple and yet it had never once occurred to him. “Donuts?”

“Donuts,” said Lancelot, still smiling. 

They got donuts. 


	5. Philistines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it wouldnt be coffeeshop if we didn't randomly retcon what characters know about each other for the sake of fun scenes we want to write

Time passed. The staff of _Fleurs de Liberthé Tea, Coffee, and Flowers_ had, by April, reluctantly acclimated to their new situation. The customers, too, had found their way over to the new location after a brief and commercially terrifying period of confusion. Work continued. School continued, too, as well as it ever did. Professors and customers jointly terrorized Lancelot and, on one Saturday, were one and the same.

“Oh, no,” Lancelot said quietly, shoulders slumping, as the bell on the door dinged threateningly. Professor Claudas, in one of those probably custom made, expensive looking suits professors wore when they thought they had better things to look forward to, walked through the door. Briefly, Lancelot considered hiding under the counter and pretending to have some sort of sudden death. 

“Professor Claudas!” said Gawain cheerfully from beside him. He wasn’t on shift, but they had taken to lurking around while the other was working, just in case either needed help with the coffee machines or how to steep tea. Now Gawain propped his elbows and the counter and gave the terror of Lancelot’s freshman year a bright smile. “How are you? What can we get you?”

“Gawain Orkney,” Claudas said with a thin, snake-like smile. “I’m well. Had a research opportunity to speak to you about, actually. Strawberry mocha, two shots of espresso with whipped cream and caramel, cooled to 293 point 15 Kelvin.” 

“Aw, nice. I’m not actually on shift, so Lancelot, that one’s on you.” He turned and for the first time seemed to notice Lancelot’s expression. “Lancelot? You good?”

“Hello, Lancelot du Lac,” said Claudas. If this had been a movie, Lancelot reflected, he probably would have twirled his goatee or something. As it was he just looked a bit stiff and awkward. “It’s been a while. I hope Intro Gov went better the second time around.”

“Erg,” said Lancelot eloquently. “Uhm. No. I’ll get your— mocha.” Something in his face indicated quite clearly he’d forgotten every precise detail of the order in favour of mounting horror. “...right up.” 

Claudas frowned at him. “You really must work on your competence,” he said, as though this was a friendly and supportive recommendation and he was doing Lancelot a very large favour by talking to him. “You remain the only student I’ve had who cried ten minutes into the final. Most people make it at least half an hour.”

“If only those poor students had a more competent teacher,” Gawain said smoothly, casual coldness sudden and startling. Lancelot flinched on reflex, turned to stare at him, and then turned to look at Claudas. 

All in all Claudas seemed more startled than hurt. His brow wrinkled. “Pardon?”

Gawain smiled pleasantly. “I only mean that it reflects poorly on the professor to reduce students to tears during a final, especially when I know at least one of them to be quite competent, actually.” 

“I— I’m rather— _Gawain_.” His mouth twitched and delayed rage seemed to hit him. “I did not expect to be treated so scurriously when I entered this shop, much less by a student I had previously respected!”

“Really? I’d think you’d be bright enough to expect rudeness in return for the same.” 

Claudas’ head swung back and forth: to Lancelot, standing frozen in shocked terror; to Gawain, still leaning casually on the counter and giving him an amiable smile. “I will _not_ ,” he spat out, “be purchasing any beverage in this establishment. And I certainly will not be offering you an internship.” He spun, strode several steps, and then waved a finger in the air. “Good day! You are both disgraceful. Adieu!”

“Oh god. Is the Disney villain guy gone yet?” Percival asked tentatively, emerging from some hiding place neither had noticed. 

Gawain blinked, emerging from a bitchy haze. “Uh, yes. Were you here the whole… nevermind.” 

“That was funny,” said Perceval, reaching out to snag the half-filled cup of strawberry milk that Lancelot had poured. “He was so evil. Wow.”

“Yeah,” Gawain agreed, shooting a concerned glance at Lancelot, who still seemed to be shocked dumb. “Sorry if that was— too much, but he was being a real asshole.” 

Finally Lancelot managed to emerge from his trance. He stuck out a hand towards Perceval, who obligingly placed the cup of strawberry milk in it, and then took a long slow sip to regain his mental fortitude. “Uhm,” he said, “Gawain, I owe you my life.”

Gawain blinked in surprise, before a more genuine smile emerged. “Oh, no problem. I can be a bitch any time. On demand.” 

The adrenaline rush finally hit Lancelot, who burst into uncontrollable giggles. “Yeah? You’ll be my bitch anytime, that’s what you’re saying? Uhuh?”

“Well— I didn’t mean it like that,” Gawain protested weakly, laughing too. He could never help laughing along with Lancelot. “It was a completely innocent offer to be, heroically mean.” 

“Oh, God,” said Lancelot, suddenly remembering the first half of the interaction. “He was going to offer you an internship. Oh, God. I’m so sorry for— uh— existing in your presence—”

Wincing, Gawain gave a dismissive hand wave. “Ah, seriously, I don’t need anything from Claudas. He’s an asshole. I—” He frowned, shook his head almost imperceptibly as if to clear it. “You don’t have to apologize for anything.”

Lancelot finished off the milk to give himself time to formulate any kind of a response to what still seemed to him a monumental sacrifice. Then he tossed the cup at Perceval, who collected them for his art project (unspecified). “I’m still— thank you. Wow. You’re, uhm, a really nice and brave bitch.”

“I want that on my grave stone,” Gawain said earnestly. “And my Kindling profile.”

“But not your CV?”

“Oh! Spice it up a bit.” Gawain glanced around the store. “Hey, do you think Kay or Vivian would notice if I stole an espresso shot?”

“Are you busy on Saturday?”

Gawain glanced up. He had been sitting at a table in the cafeteria, pretending to work on an essay for his Political Theory class and actually scrolling through Instagram on two different devices while watching a movie. He had not expected to be talked at, and particularly not by Lancelot, who was rarely spotted in the wilds of the student union. “Me?”

“Yes?” Lancelot asked, glanced to both sides to make sure he hadn’t actually been talking to anyone else. “Yes. Uh. Sorry to bother you.” 

Waving a comforting hand, Gawain pulled his earbuds out and nodded at the chair opposite him. “Uh, probably, but I don’t give a shit. What’s up?”

Taking the seat, and fiddling with his hands in that nervous way of his Lancelot addressed him. “Nothing, I just had an— art thing, and I need to bring someone with, and wondered, you know if you aren’t doing anything else?” 

_Don’t be weird_ , thought Gawain fiercely to himself. _This could be a business relationship. This could be a transactional, not at all friendly offer. Don’t be weird._ “Sexy and epic,” he said, and cursed himself, “let me check my nonexistent calendar. What time?”

“Three thirty,” Lancelot said, letting the comment slide. “At the art building, uh, it’s across the quad from the library.” 

“Can you remind me about an hour before? I may be doing things but I will stop doing them.” He coughed. Distantly, he recognized he was sounding very deranged. However, the more one thinks about acting normally, the less normal one acts. “Should I bring anything? Wear anything?”

“You should wear clothes,” said Lancelot firmly. The other oddities he did not comment on because, Gawain remembered, Lancelot tended toward oddity himself and was generally refreshingly unbothered by it. “I can text you a reminder. Uh, you really don’t have to if you’re busy though.” 

“Nah, it’s going to be, like, pretending to work on an essay. And taking indecent selfies.” He gave him a grin and tried to make it look casual and business-oriented as opposed to friendship-oriented. “You’re more important.” _Good one, Gawain,_ Gawain thought. Very business casual. Very _I’ll have my secretary make a note in my schedule_. This was a success.

“Oh—! Well, thank you. Alright then,” Lancelot said with a tentative smile. “Thanks.” 

Saturday happened.

“So,” said Gawain, when they were safely on the roof of the Art building and out of earshot of any nearby Artists, “I don’t want to be rude, but what the fuck was that? Am I just bad at modern art or was the sticky confetti a little weird?”

“It’s about… society,” Lancelot said, gesturing with spread hands. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know either. It was weird. Art galleries don’t— uh, usually have splash zones.” 

“What? You haven’t heard of the famous Michelangelo kiddie pool in the Uffizi of Firenze? Shame on you.”

“Hmm, no, I’m a— what’s the word?”

“Philistine,” Gawain supplied confidently. He was getting pretty good at the _guessing what word Lancelot was thinking of_ game.

“Yeah.” Lancelot hummed thoughtfully. “I should have made mine, explode or something. Party poppers and rusty nails in the frame.”

“Tetanus would be a dumb way to go, even for an—” Gawain stopped before he could say art student. “Anyway. That would be sad. Your— it was really really good. Really good.” 

“Ahhh,” said Lancelot, wringing his hands. Then he repeated it for emphasis. “Ahhhhh. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming, too, I really don’t know— I mean, I guess I could have asked Morgan, but my mother was busy, and— I don’t know. Thank you.”

“Thank you for asking me. It was genuinely interesting, splash zone aside,” Gawain said. Third option was pretty good. Quite good. “You used a lot of… red.” 

Lancelot turned away, ostensibly to trot across the roof and sit by the edge, but Gawain didn’t miss his deep flush— whether flattery or embarrassment, he didn’t know. “Ah, it’s, uh, it’s a good colour.” His words were muffled by the wind. “And I like slasher movies. That’s my secret. Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won't tell anyone,” Gawain promised solemnly. “If I do, you can put on a mask and kill me about it. Slash me.” This joke used up the extent of his slasher movie knowledge. They didn’t really appeal to him, mainly because he was pretty sure, tropes wise, he would die first.

Lancelot spun around and faced up at Gawain, his eyes comedically wide. “Slash you? Are you— is that an innuendo?”

“What?” Gawain dropped down onto the edge of the roof beside him, letting his legs dangle down over the edge. “Slashing? For what? Throat cutting sex?”

“Oh! Well— no— hm. I forgot you don’t— internet.”

“I have the internet,” Gawain protested. “I have an instagram.” In an act of extreme restraint, he did not share his follower count, suspecting it to be one of those immoral actions he was trying to avoid. “And Facebook, for networking. And, uh, Linkedin—”

“Okay. Okay, I mean, I’ve seen you text, you know slang. But, like, you aren’t, like, on the internet in, like, a— a way.”

Gawain looked at him curiously. “Alright, then. Educate me in your internet exsanguination sex rituals.” 

“Uh.” Knowledge had been hinted at and now was being sought, which was horrifying. “Haghg. Hm. Rlwrghs?”

Gawain nodded. “I see. Interesting.”

In a show of deep trust, Lancelot launched into an attempted explanation, or at least stumbled vaguely in the direction of one. “Ah… so, you know shipping?”

“Like UPS?” said Gawain, covering for a shameful personal middle school history which he had only mostly succeeded in blocking out of his mind. 

“Ah! No, not at all. God. Uhm… okay, you have to promise not to ask how I know this.”

“I’ll add it to the list of things you can kill me for without me coming back as a vengeful ghost,” Gawain swore. “No questions, only listening. Yes Sir.” 

“Alright, so, uh, the basics. Have you heard of… like… fandom?”

“Yes,” said Gawain, mercy outweighing shame. “The general concept.” 

This was a decent start for Lancelot. “And you know how— some people— write fanfiction?”

“Like Dante, yeah.” 

“Uh,” said Lancelot, “sure. If that helps you, yes, like Dante. Well— shipping is— God. I don’t know enough about Dante to explain this in Dante terms. Do you have… a favourite TV show or something?”

“No,” said Gawain, who hadn’t turned on a television since at least high school. 

“Book?”

“Haha. I used to be able to read. Uh...” He thought for a moment about books he’d both read and could admit to reading. “Marcus Aurelius. Meditations.”

“Like in Black Sails?” said Lancelot, bewildered. “Is that real?”

“This conversation might be easier if we spoke it in Russian,” Gawain said hopelessly.

“I don’t— speak Russian.”

“Neither do I.” 

There was a pause. “Hector does. I think. Uhm. You haven’t read _any_ books that are, like, popular? And have characters? And are fiction?”

“The Bible.” 

“Right,” said Lancelot, who had spent enough time on AO3.com (a monetized fanfiction website where you had to have a paid account to post more than 10,000 words a month) to know that the Bible was not irrelevant to this conversation. “Let’s— you know what, let’s imagine that you read the Bible and you think Judas was in love with Jesus.”

“As I so often do. In fact I think I saw a play like that. Okay, go on, I’m imagining.”

Relaxing into the joking edge of the conversation, Lancelot leaned forward very close and, with utmost intensity, said, “Imagine you are _very very_ invested in Jesus and Judas’ relationship. It could, uh, it could involve kissing. Or it could not.”

“Oh? _Kissing_ huh? Salacious. Alright I’m imagining being very invested in Judas and Jesus maybe kissing. Is this hypnosis? I’m being hypnotized.” 

“That’s very nice of you,” said Lancelot. He was being met with a remarkable lack of judgement or mocking comments and was very much appreciating it. “Well, if you really think Jesus and Judas make a great couple, then you ship them!”

“Where to?”

“Uh… no, that’s what shipping means.”

“Oh.” Gawain nodded slowly. “Yes, I see. This in no way answered the original question but it was fascinating. Thank you.” 

“What was the— oh! Ah. Yes. Well, um, you know the LG—” Here, Lancelot ran into a problem. It was evident from his face that he had been about to say something along the thematic lines of _have you heard of gay people_ , and then remembered that despite Gawain’s general everything, he at the very least had kissed men. 

Gawain blinked slowly guessing at the direction of the sentence. “I— I’m dual majouring in queer theory.” 

“What?” He received a glance which took in his plain button-up, semi-formal pants, and dress shoes. “Since when?”

Shrugging, trying to stay casual, Gawain said: “Since sophomore year about. I— don’t bring it up. I should, I think.”

“That’s cool.”

Beneath them, the last of the art students filed out of the exhibition hall, talking amiably between themselves. Gawain stared down at them. It was ridiculous to feel at all hesitant in coming out to Lancelot— Lancelot, of all people, who had a trans pin on his backpack and doodled things on post-it notes that he didn’t hide as well as he thought he did when people walked up. They had known each other for four years. Now the fear was the dreaded question: _why didn’t you tell me before?_ And— he couldn’t quite come out. Not the whole thing. Instead, he said, “Lancelot, you’ve got to have seen me kissing guys.”

“Hng,” said Lancelot, with a Repressed Memories Expression. “I suppose yeah, when you were drunk. Or there was financial gain in it, like with Priamus. I dunno. I guess— shouldn’t have assumed.” 

_No, you shouldn’t_ , thought Gawain, and tried to ignore the twinge of hurt. “No, it’s— I won’t pretend that isn’t— an assumption I’ve cultivated.” 

He almost expected Lancelot to say what Joconde had said, what Cade had said, what everyone he had talked to about this had said. _Why?_ But thankfully Lancelot just gave him a sympathetic look, tinged with a bit of apology. “I guess, to be fair, I haven’t exactly seen you kissing anyone much. Just, you know how it is. You always think you’re alone.”

“Yeah,” Gawain said after a long pause that was just a tad too contemplative to verge fully into uncomfortable. “Yeah. It’s— pretty silly, really. Like, caring so much whether I pass when most of my friends are trans anyway, it’s like— why does it matter so much? And I know why, but still. I’m rambling, a bit.” 

There was a pause, then Lancelot burst into giggles. “I thought you were my token cishet friend!” he said plaintively. “Come on, Gawain! I needed you for— for diversity points!”

Gawain stared incredulously for a moment before joining him in laughter. _Frien_ d, he thought. _Very_ cool. “Ah, lemme think— my little brother’s girlfriend’s sister is cishet. Lionesse. We can befriend her.” 

“No,” Lancelot said firmly. He had heard stories of Lionesse from Lynette. He had no intent of befriending Lionesse. He had no intent of ever interacting with Lionesse. 

“Ah, so you’re familiar.”

They sat in silence for several minutes, watching the shadows elongate in the last glowing hours before dusk. Gawain’s nerves faded gradually. Then he put words together. “Wait,” he said slowly, “who did you see me kissing when I was drunk?”

“Pelleas,” said Lancelot. Then like a tacked on small print subclause of a shady contract, added, “among others.” 

“Oh. _Oh._ Oh, Christ. I— ah.” His nerves made a thrilled return. “That was not my most altruistic moment. And also, if you thought I was straight— Jesus. Oh my God.”

“Uh, yeah. It’s kind of why I stopped— talking to you for a while.” 

Gawain’s first instinct was to say, _well, now you know I’m not straight it’s all cleared up._ He pursed his lips over the words and kept them inside. They weren’t right. He had forgotten about that particular event; forgotten it, glorified it as a comedic prelude to the more climactic fight later on. He tried to look at it from someone else’s perspective. There had been a lot of other people present, whose perspectives had seemed to be that it was very funny. They had also been drunk, mostly. Lancelot hadn’t been. “Could you… if you don’t mind… could we talk about that? Was that— really so bad?”

“I— yeah. Uhm.” Lancelot blinked a little, surprised. “It was, kind of bad. I don’t know how to explain, I just sort of realized— it was sort of a, what is it?”

“Revelation,” said Gawain numbly. “Very cool.” He frowned. No one had ever said turning over a new leaf would be painless. “I know you said you don’t know how to explain, but if you would— think through it or something— I would be really grateful. I mean— I don’t— he’s a shithead, I’ll be honest, he’s a real shithead, Lancelot. He’s been practically stalking Ettarde for, like, two years. So I embarrassed him a bit. Ah, fuck, I sound defensive. I don’t mean to be, I’m— I’m trying. I’m trying really hard.”

Lancelot was still looking at him. Doing that thing where he knew things. “Uh— okay. I’ll try to explain. I mean, he does sound like a real asshole. It was more like— the way you...” He snapped. Lancelot was good at snapping. Gawain had noticed that for some reason. “It was the fact that you could see the camera and were looking at it and were— were happy about that? And that you would— even if he sucks, and deserved to, to be embarrassed, which he probably did, it was kind of shitty to use— like, being closeted against him. Humiliate him like that. And I sort of realized that— everyone regrets kissing you.” 

A sensation like freezing water spread down Gawain’s spine. “Jesus,” he said, his voice hollow. “Really?”

“Oh, no,” Lancelot winced. “I mean, that was what I thought in the moment, I mean I don’t— I don’t know. If that’s true. Probably not. Uhm. Harsh, sorry.” 

“I don’t want to— I mean— Jesus.” Then, in the biggest lie he had told since his mother had asked him what time he would be home the day of his 18th birthday, he said, “I’m just out to have a good time.”

“Right. That’s cool.” For a moment it seemed Lancelot was about to awkwardly change the subject. “It’s just— that you don’t seem like you are. Having a good time.” 

“I hoped other people would be, at least. I don’t know. You— you don’t want to hear about my sex life, sorry. I’m sorry. You asked me not to talk about it once. I didn’t mean to forget.”

Lancelot had one of those expressions that until recently had been every expression, till Gawain began to uncode them. This was still a mystery. “Oh— I— didn’t even remember that. You remembered that.” 

“You said you only wanted to talk about it over pizza,” said Gawain, sounding inexplicably accusatory. “I see no pizza. But— thank you, uh— I know that probably wasn’t easy to explain. Thank you. I get it now. Thank you again.”

“No problem.” Lancelot looked down at the mostly empty section of campus. “Thank you for coming to, uh, that. Art thing.” 

“Thank you for inviting me, a known cishet. That was really brave of you. I’m honestly impressed.”

“I’m very— open minded,” Lancelot said with a small smile. “Uhm— I don’t know how to word this not in a rude way, I don’t mean it in a rude way. I just have a big project I need to work on and I have to be home—”

“Oh, no worries. I should eat dinner.” He pointed out across campus, at the last flickering tip-top of the sun. “I don’t know art words, but look at this epic sunset.”

Lancelot did. It was red-gold, and above it the sky stretched into a deep dusky purple speckled with early stars. He thought he would try to paint it later that night. It felt like a scene that should be held onto. Smiling slightly, he held out a hand to help Gawain up. “Have a great evening, Gawain. Thanks for everything.”

“Yeah,” said Gawain, “you too.”

Several hours later Lancelot got a text. It read: 

_ETTARDE_

_FUCKING ETTARDE_

_I KNEW I HAD AT LEAST ONE CISHET FRIEND_

_Ha im more open-minded than u :3_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiiiiiiiiii *does a sexy little dance for you if you comment* (you get to pick between rey and lou for who does the sexy dance but dont tell us who you pick or the other will be wounded. yeah our 'please comment' stunts are getting more and more out there. is it working?)


	6. Rabies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> if you're reading this then there's a high chance you haven't read the chapter before it because we're posting this several hours after the previous one. go back and read it. lava you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for implied alcoholism

It was pizza that day, an unusually overcast afternoon in April; pizza, and the vague idea of discussing plans for after they graduated. They were, by dint of Lancelot’s gap year and Gawain’s six years of half-schooling and half-working, graduating at the same time. It was foggy. The pizza was too greasy, and they took it outside to sit in the little park by the 11/7.

“So my plan,” Gawain announced, after a few desultory bites, “is to work for another year and then take my LSATs this time next year. And somehow figure out how to make enough money to pay back the fucking— way more than I have— that I owe for this semester without my scholarship. Maybe I can do crime like Priamus.”

Lancelot weighed this plan. “That could work. You could be an assassin.”

“I think I’d be a better conman.” He paused, looking at Lancelot. “You could be a hitman if you wanted though. I’m— I’m giving it to you.” 

“Thank you,” said Lancelot, mock-seriously. Then he gazed vaguely off into the distance. “I would kill people in really horrible ways.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, warming rapidly to the subject like he’d hoped Gawain would ask. “Gruesome stuff. Like, blood eagles and— and such.” He trailed off guiltily. 

“Blood eagles?” said Gawain, who absolutely knew what a blood eagle was.

“Yes! It’s a— an execution method from viking sagas. You cut someone open from the back and—” Lancelot paused for a moment with an expression like he wasn’t sure if this was appropriate lunch conversation. “Well, it’s very violent. Apparently there's no, like, no evidence anyone actually did one. So I would be the first! Theoretically.” 

“Aw, that’s really exciting. You could get into, I dunno, the Guinness World Record or something.”

“What would you want to get in the World Record for?”

“Most d—” He stopped. “Uh. I dunno. Lemme think. Most dick sucked.”

“You can do better,” said Lancelot, but somehow managed to make it sound earnest and full of wide-eyed belief in Gawain’s innate potential, rather than judgemental.

“Ah,” said Gawain, trying not to be honoured. “Okay. Lemme try again. Most— most pussy eaten.” 

They both collapsed into giggles. When they sobered, their laughter muted by the fog and the subpar pizza, Gawain said, “No, but, jokes aside… hm. Wait, you were joking, I can joke too.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

“Oh, okay.” Gawain finished off the last of his crust. “Well, I’m glad you have it figured out then. I don’t really know— where I’m going. But, you know, maybe I can be your murder apprentice.” 

“I would be honoured,” said Lancelot seriously, and gave him one of those rare grins that he doled out only on holidays.

It wasn’t going to be the _worst_ birthday party he’d ever been to. That would be his own eighteenth. This thought was not as comforting as Gawain might have liked. 

“I know you won’t know anyone there very well,” Lancelot had said nervously, several days before, in a massive understatement. He did not know them well; he knew them very badly, in that they knew each other in a very bad way. “But it’s just a few hours, and my mother will be there and I’d love to introduce you to her, in a non employee way, and— you don’t have to come. Sorry.”

“I know Tristan and Isolde. And Elaine. Ah, I think I’ve heard of this Gareth fellow,” Gawain joked, a little weakly. “It’s not a big deal. I’m— thank you for inviting me.”

“Ah, so you’ll be there?”

“Course,” he said, and stopped. Playing it off as a personal favour would give him a sort of social power, but also seemed a tad manipulative. He wondered when he would stop seeing opportunities to be awful everywhere. “I’ll be there.” 

And so here he was. He was sitting on a stool in the corner of the living room, sipping an eminently non-alcoholic fruity beverage that Viviane had pressed into his hands without waiting for him to ask. It had not escaped his notice that _other_ people had been offered something that looked like champagne, and he tried to ignore this. Even his baby brother had been given alcohol, if in limited, parentally-approved quantities. 

Elaine had not shown up yet. The bus had been delayed, Lancelot had mentioned to him offhand. Just half an hour. He could make it half an hour in polite conversation with Lancelot’s other friends before Elaine Ascolat showed up to save him. 

“Gawain Orkney,” said the voice he had been dreading, from some distance above him due to the sad stool situation. “How’s your Saturday morning in this lovely month of April?”

“Hey, Dinadan,” said Gawain, trying to inject any emotion into his voice other than bus urgency and failing. “It’s good.” He’d hit upon a strategy to enforce polite blandess. Force all responses to be mentally constructed in his very limited two semesters of Turkish and then translate them back into English. They didn’t teach you any insults until at least third semester so there was no way to be rude. “And… your Saturday?”

“Good! Good.” Dinadan settled against the wall, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “It’s nice to see friends.”

“Yep,” said Gawain, then concentrated all his mental faculties on psychically turning the water in his drink into wine. “It is.” 

There was a long pause. When he chanced a glance up, Dinadan was giving him a long, unreadable look. “I see you’ve become good friends with Lancelot. Again.”

Oh no. Oh no. “Uh— well, yes. I would like to think so.” 

“You’re being awfully reserved. Something on your mind?” Dinadan paused, gave him a small smile. “I’m here if you need someone to talk to.”

Gawain blinked. “Er. Yeah. Thanks, Dinadan.” For a moment he considered the comedic value in telling him everything right there. Ultimately the personal humiliation wouldn’t be worth whatever shock he’d get, and besides it would be a weird mood for Lancelot’s party and that was Bad. “Nope. Nothing. No thoughts. No brain. Just non alcoholic fruit beverage.” 

“Oh!” Dinadan’s eyebrows inched up his forehead in an expression of courteous innocence. “Would you like me to get you some champagne?”

This was sort of a low blow, even though Gawain probably deserved it and had gone lower himself in the past, which was why he deserved it. “No thank you. I— I’m trying to drink less.” Was he? Whatever. He was now. 

“Oh, nice. I hope that helps with your quality of life,” said Dinadan, too quickly, and then a moment passed and his mouth twitched slightly. He sighed and pushed himself off the wall, then in an aggravating burst of patronizing comfort, clasped Gawain once on the shoulder. “Sorry to have offered.” For what it was worth, he sounded mostly genuine. Then he wandered off towards Tristan and Iseult, who were lurking by the refreshments table tossing chips at one another.

Gawain felt as if he’d passed through some sort of gauntlet. He suspected it was one of many. Elaine still had not arrived despite his forlorn glances at the door, and he was almost out of non-alcoholic fruit beverage to pretend to be occupied with. His victory was looking decidedly pyrrhic. 

An interesting philosophical question posed by many reluctant party goers is: how long can I hang out in the bathroom on my phone before anyone notices how long I’ve been ostensibly going to the toilet? Gawain decided to experiment. There were not _too_ many people here, which meant he could probably scroll through Instagram while sitting on the floor for quite a while without anyone knocking on the door, but on the flip side, that also made his absence more notable. The sweet spot was probably ten minutes. Ten minutes of Dinadan-less cellphone time was sounding quite nice, as long as he didn’t like anything Dinadan had posted— they did of course follow one another— and thus alert him to his illicit escape. 

Ten minutes came and went too quickly. A girl he had chatted with briefly over winter break and who lived across the country had gotten a kitten. The pictures were very cute. Ysabele had won some award for hallway architecture. Lancelot had been wished happy birthday by several people, none of whom had been him, because he didn’t go in for that sort of thing. 

He washed his hands out of a sense of general propriety and exited. 

“Gawain!” said Cerise, who had been waiting for him. “What a surprise! We need to talk.”

“Cerise!” He said, in the tone of a horror movie character greeting the masked killer. “Do we?” 

“Yes, Gawain, we do. Privately,” she said meaningfully. What that meant was he had no idea. Or tried not to. 

“Okay,” he said, and dutifully followed her deeper into the hallway. 

“Alright,” she said, when they were settled back into the shadowy hall. “Out with it. What’s your play here?”

Ah. She was quite a bit blunter than Dinadan. “I don’t have a play, Cerise. Thank you for asking.”

“Uh huh. Anytime. Are you sure you don’t have a scheme? I ask to spare you from what I’ll do to you if you’re lying,” she said, with more friendliness than aggression.

“No Cerise. Thank you Cerise,” Gawain said again. Then he shrugged. Cerise already thought he was an asshole and that was sort of a relief. “I don’t know if you heard but my life fell apart recently. I’m sort of trying to be, you know, a better person.”

She studied him suspiciously. “Huh. Okay. Well, good luck with that. I’m not convinced.” 

“Oh no,” he crooned, and regretted the words even as he spoke them, even as he tried to stop them, “however will I cope without your approval?”

Her lips narrowed. “If you try anything,” she said, in a polite and measured tone of voice, “anything that _remotely_ indicates to me you’re hanging out with Lancelot as some kind of shitty ego trip, or to make yourself feel better, or, or to get into his pants—”

“Jesus Christ, Cerise,” he said, more to stop her from talking any more than to defend himself. “I mean, I know—” Okay, so maybe it was a pretty fair accusation, considering what she knew about him. This reality sat unhappily in his stomach for a second while he floundered. “That’s not what I’m doing. I’m— I’m really just his friend because I want to be.” 

There was a moment where she stared at him baldly. Then she broke and glanced up at the bookshelf, her face guilty. “Sorry, I really shouldn’t have— that wasn’t okay. I know you’re not, like, a creep, just— I’m just trying to look out for him. That was actually really— I shouldn’t have said that.”

He let out a breath. It was weird to be on the other side of an apology. “I mean— I get that you’re suspicious of me, and not, well, without cause. But I seriously wouldn’t— I don’t have any plans or plots or whatever. And I especially don’t have Lancelot plots.” 

“Okay. The reassurance is appreciated.” Before he could flee the dimly-lit hallway, she reached out a hand. “Wait, I’m— I really shouldn’t have said that, I’m really sorry.”

He took a half step back on instinct, and tried to play it off as a cool lean against the wall he’d backed into. “Huh? It’s fine. I’ve been an asshole. I know.”

“No, I mean the— the bit about you wanting to sleep with Lancelot.”

He opened his mouth then closed it again. “Uh. That’s fine, I mean, you’ve accused me of philandery before, right? Not unfairly. So, yeah, it’s fine.” 

Cerise glanced guiltily down the hallway, clearly worrying someone else would show up. “I… I don’t remember that, but— I— I mean, honestly I should know better than to slutshame someone.”

Wait, was that what had just happened? “Oh. Well—” Being on the other side of apologies was _also_ miserable. Who knew. “Thank you for apologizing. I don’t mind, really.” He stopped himself from asking if he could go now and opted for further reassurance. “I mean, it’s true, right? Not the Lancelot part but, you know, the general reputation.” 

Cerise looked as though she was undergoing her own personal emotional journey, which she probably was, as she was currently attempting to explain to someone she didn’t much like that she had in fact wronged them, while simultaneously giving them an unasked-for pep talk. “I think, uh, I mean, I don’t know,” she said coherently. “Live your life, my dude.”

He squinted at her in horror. “What?”

“Be— excellent to each other,” Cerise tried weakly. “Fuck, let’s go get something to drink. We’ve been here for a while. Good to know you don’t have any schemes, old sport.”

“Right. Coach.” He made a vaguely sporty gesture then gave up. “You know, if— nevermind. Drink.” What he had been about to say was _if you were anyone else people would think we were hooking up_ , and then he decided it wasn’t very funny in context and also would probably make her uncomfortable. There was, he thought vaguely, something to be examined in this whole thing. He tucked it in a box on the rapidly-expanding shelf in his brain devoted to things to be examined later, right under the box devoted to remembering to get a journal so he didn’t have to remember all this stuff. 

No one seemed to have noticed that they had left— Lancelot was on a stressful-sounding phonecall with someone who was presumably Elaine, talking animatedly about how to get across town in the rain when you had dropped your bus pass in the gutter. When he saw Gawain slip into the room his smile brightened and he held up a finger. “Ah, Elaine, one sec, I— Gawain— Elaine’s going to be here in, like, an hour and twenty minutes—”

“I can drive over and pick her up,” Gawain offered, popping a chip into his mouth. He was feeling a lot more relaxed now that two of his three nightmares, Dinadan and Cerise, had confronted him and done all the damage they could. The third was not the confronting type, but rather the judgemental type, and picking up Elaine would both enable him to escape her _and_ to look like a good samaritan. “Where’s she at?”

“Uh… Elaine, where are you right now?” There was a pause. “Downtown. Clamorgan and Rheged.”

“That’s no problem. I have like six eights of a tank.”

“That’s three fourths,” Lynette pointed out gleefully. “You fucking dumbass.”

“Thank you, Lynette.” 

It was a coward’s way out. Gawain was a proud coward. He grabbed his bag from the stool in the corner where he had left it and jetted out the room, pausing at the door long enough to spin around and point at Dinadan triumphantly. “I commend Ms. du Lac’s expertly made and fortunately non-alcoholic fruit beverage!”

That was weird, he thought, as he closed the door. That was a weird exit line. He was still trying to figure out if he _did_ want to sleep with Lancelot. He hadn’t considered it much beyond the fact that Lancelot was definitely hot. There was the baseline assumption that if Lancelot asked, he would of course be more than happy to oblige, but it wasn’t _personal._ He had, in fact, been very proud of himself for making a friend with whom he had not slept prior to initiation of friendship. 

The elevator looked elderly, decrepit, and terrifying. He chanced the stairs, mulling the matter over as he did so. There had not been anyone in his life he could think of whose appearance or personality had inspired in him anything beyond artistic appreciation and, if they got along well, the thought that sex might be enjoyable on a social level as well as the physical. He liked Lancelot. He didn’t care one way or another if he ever slept with him— which was fortunate, as he didn’t see much likelihood of it happening.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like anyone he hadn’t slept with. It just seemed like the venn diagram of people who wanted to talk to him and people who wanted to sleep with him was distinctly circular. 

Except for Lancelot. And Elaine! God bless Elaine. The rest of the evening was looking distinctly less grim as he started Gringolet, which made an old car noise of protest before grumbling into a state of functionality. 

She was waiting where Lancelot had said, huddled under the awning of a bus stop and looking frozen and drenched in her pea coat. But she gave him a cheery wave as he pulled up by the curb and leaned across to pop the passenger door open. “Oh my God,” she said, dripping onto the tattered upholstery, “thank you so much. It is so good to see you!”

“Likewise,” said Gawain honestly. “God. I should have brought a towel. The uh, heater is super broken.” It was broken because he’d tried to fix it himself because he’d seen a poster of a sexy mechanic and thought it was an appealing aesthetic and then was too embarrassed to go to an actual professional and explain himself. He did not share this information. 

“Ahh… I’m sorry about the water situation. I think I’m cursed. Wherever I go it starts to rain. Or I fall into a decorative fountain or something. I think destiny wants me to go sail boats and it’s trying to tell me that.”

“I bet you could make good money like that. Selling rain to farmers, twenty bucks an hour to stand in their fields and such. Maybe you have to be more entrepreneurial about the universe's gifts.” 

“No,” she announced, “I’m planning to be a harbinger of doom. Better career prospects and by better I mean funnier. Anyway, how have you been? I feel like it’s been fifty million years since I’ve seen you.”

Oh right. How he’d been. “I don’t even know where to start. It’s honestly not a story worth telling. I’m doing okay! I’m having character growth,” he announced. “Uh. You?” 

“Oh, neat. I’m an NPC, but who knows, maybe I’m having shit behind the scenes. The DM hasn’t told me yet, though.” She paused to surreptitiously wipe her hands dry on the seat. “And by that I mean the department hasn’t gotten back to me about whether I can use my transfer credits from freshman year to graduate this semester. That’s what’s going on with me.”

“Maybe you could rain on them ‘til they relent. Get all those documents wet, really back ‘em against a wall.” 

She lowered her voice to a dark rasp. “Death to the chair of the Fiber Arts department.”

They made their way happily back to the apartment, where Vivian propritarily rushed Elaine off to someplace with towels. In the time he had been gone, the other attendees of the party had apparently talked Lancelot into playing Twister, which didn’t seem to be going well because no one looked very flexible and you probably weren’t supposed to play with that many people. Elaine was offered champagne and non-alcoholic fruit beverage and declined both in preference of materializing a Sprite from somewhere about her person. 

When Elaine had been properly dried and refreshed, Viviane turned to Gawain. “Lovely to see you here,” she said imperiously. “Thank you so much for picking up Elaine, that was so sweet.”

“Oh— it was no problem. Thank you for having me.” He was very afraid of her, but this was a saying the right prewritten lines sort of conversation, so it was alright as long as she didn’t deviate at all from the script. 

“And what’s your major again? Are you the poli-sci major?”

The poli-sci major was Dinadan. “International Relations.” He hesitated. “And Gender Studies.”

She nodded once, assessing this. “That’s an interesting combination. No minor, I assume?”

“Uh, I was an econ minor but I dropped it last year. It would have taken an even longer time to graduate.” As he answered he frantically went over her words. Somehow he was convinced she wasn’t actually just asking about his major and was in fact presenting a coded test which he needed to decipher. If she was, he neither found nor passed it. 

She hummed, and for a moment he thought he would escape unscathed. Then she asked the question every student dreads. “What do you plan on doing with that?”

Oh Jesus. Oh Christ. “Well, I uh, I’ll take the LSAT’s next year and then— hopefully go to law school for international law.” 

“That’s very impressive,” she said. He couldn’t tell if she was approving of his aspirations or doubtful of whether he could achieve them. “Well, it’s so nice of you to come. Good to get to talk to you outside of work!”

“Yeah, it’s lovely! I’m really flattered to be invited, and your apartment is lovely. It’s lovely to be here.” _You said lovely three times,_ said the voice in his head which used to provide him with things to say but now only criticized him. “I’m gonna go watch them fall over at Twister.”

He made a hasty escape.

Thankfully, he did not have to stand awkwardly next to Elaine watching people who mostly didn’t like him play Twister, because Lancelot belatedly recalled his host duties and extracted himself to greet Elaine.

“Uhm, hi Elaine! Sorry you uh,” he gestured, “rain.” 

“Eh.” She made a floppy motion with her arms like a resigned fish. “I’m used to it. You’re so old now! You’re middle-aged! This is so exciting. Happy birthday.”

“Thank you I—”

“Wait!” she stopped him. “I have something for you. To commemorate your aging.” She reached into her jacket, presumably a different pocket than the Sprite Pocket, and drew out a plastic bag. “I didn’t have any wrapping paper, which was lucky, because the bag protected it from the rain.” 

She handed off the plastic bag, which was only slightly damp. Lancelot took it with a wide-eyed expression, reached in and pulled out what looked like a large notebook, so covered in stickers, washi tape, tacked on drawings and cutouts that the original colour of the cover was impossible to guess. He opened the book to find thick, high quality paper. “Oh my God, I love this—” —and other appropriate gift-receiving exclamations. The Twister players rose and gathered round to observe, a few of them wandering over to their bags to find their own presents.

Gawain sat back while gifts were delivered. This was what he had missed about plots, everything coming together. Because he knew for certain that he had the best gift and since it by nature was an outside presentation, he got to go last. This mattered. Why was not clear. 

Eventually his turn arrived. He beckoned Lancelot out to the hallway, where he had stashed his present in the umbrella stand. “Behold,” he said, and gestured.

Lancelot beheld. It was wrapped in parchment and was a funny shape, funny insofar as it was very distinctive and also very striking. It looked a bit like a large cross. It was instantly recognizable. 

“Bro!” yelled Tristan from behind Lancelot. “Is that a fucking sword?”

“Well, you can use it for other things too,” Gawain said without thinking, then froze. Lancelot shot him a strangled glance like he wanted very much to laugh but not in front of his mother, and reached into the umbrella stand to retrieve it. It was nearly as tall as Gawain was, which he knew very well because it had sat at the back of his closet for several years and mocked him with its height. “Uh… this has a story.”

“Uh huh?” 

“So— uh— my Aunt Guinevere called me in the middle of the night I think in sophomore year,” said Gawain. He had never told this story to anyone because he had been convinced the sword would overhear, come to life, and attack him in his sleep. He had a strong sense that swords could do that if you weren’t careful. He’d also belted it firmly to his shoe rack out of fear it would try to kill him for carnal activities. He didn’t know why he thought swords could do this, but he did. “And she was like— hey, I know you’re a real little shit, and I need to get rid of this sword in a hurry. Can you— can you look after it for me?”

“So it’s a _cursed_ sword,” Isolde said before Lancelot could react. “Sick.”

“Sick,” Tristan agreed. Dinadan didn’t say anything but looked like he’d decided against catty comments about regifting. Everyone else just looked impressed and made monosyllabic exclamations to the effect. 

“So, uh, I drove out to the Walmart across town at 3 in the morning and she— my aunt, the successful lawyer— she was there and she gave me this sword.” This was, miraculously, a true story. He had mostly forgotten how odd it was. “And she said, um, I still remember this, she said, don’t put it on your wall or above your bed in any way. And I said okay. And then I had a sword.” 

He cleared his throat. They were all staring at him in a mix of confusion and laughter. “And when I tried to bring it up to her she pretended not to know what I was talking about. Anyway, Lancelot, I thought you would really like an evil cursed sword. You’ve even got all that red paint from Cerise for your birthday, you could paint it like it has blood on it. Or paint over the hilt or something.”

“This…” Lancelot said slowly. “This is going to make me unbearable I— I am not, as a person, meant to, to have the kind of confidence owning a sword will give me. Uhm. Consider yourselves warned.” 

“Who you gonna kill?” said Gareth, his voice awed. “I claim first stabbed by Lancelot rights.”

“I’m not stabbing anyone!” Lancelot said quickly, loudly enough that his mother could clearly hear him. “Or breaking anything.” 

“I claim second!” put in Gawain, before anyone else could claim important murder rights. “But— uh— I know this is a weird present, I—”

“It’s a _very good_ present,” Lancelot said, almost reverently unwrapping the paper, which fell away to the floor to reveal gleaming metal. Gawain had done some brief research upon receiving the sword, and quite a lot more before gifting it, and it was no prop sword or decoration; it was at once incredibly old and shiny and new. It looked real in the way movie swords never did. It was a little chilling, actually, for reasons he couldn’t quite put to words.

Luckily, Lancelot was the opposite of chilled by it. He ran one hand down the length of the blade with an ease very incongruous with everything about him, and then lifted the point to the ceiling, startling Viviane in the doorway. 

“Be careful with the— ah!” she exclaimed, and then seemed to decide that he could look after himself. “I trust you.”

“I won’t stab anyone,” Lancelot repeated. 

“Not with all these witnesses around,” Dinadan added thoughtfully. 

The tip of the sword wavered threateningly towards him, and he leaned back. “No furniture, walls, or people will be harmed,” Lancelot promised. “And! I will not hang it up on my wall. Any other instructions for dealing with the curse?”

“None that will be relevant to your life,” said Gawain, but not in a mean way. 

“It’s a Gawain-specific cursed sword?” asked Dinadan suspiciously.

“It sure seems like it,” he answered, having decided mystery had worked for him so far. 

Lancelot finally tore his eyes away from the cool metal of the blade. “Thank you _so much_ ,” he said, and pulled Gawain into a slightly dangerous hug. “I love this. This is so awesome. I’m— thank you. I’m going to commit so much murder, I promise.”

“Oh, good!” said Gawain, who was certainly experiencing emotions he was having trouble fitting in a _to be considered_ box. “You do that.”

Viviane clucked her tongue. “Not in the apartment.”

Lancelot said something back. What that was, Gawain wasn’t clear. Part of his brain was in the apartment and the other part was in a cloudy place with harps. 

The party continued, namely featuring _The_ _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ , because Lancelot was a man of predictable tastes. Gawain sat curled on the floor with his back against one of the couch arms and nursed another non-alcoholic fruit beverage and a quesadilla. In the end it had not been a bad day. The sword had been a success, and he had gotten to see both Elaine and Lancelot. 

Onscreen, someone died. Lancelot laughed gleefully. 

And Gawain sat, mental fingers drifting over the shelf with its tightly packed boxes of _to be considered._

Basically Gawain's life was divided into two sections: before and after being quite seriously bitten by a maybe rabid fox behind his place of employment and then having a very odd and, in retrospect, momentous emergency room experience. This was not his initial thought upon being quite seriously bitten by a maybe rabid fox. His initial thought had been something like “Oh fuck,” or “Alas,” or “Why does everything I touch fall apart oh God.” 

“Oh!” said Lancelot, approximately an eternity of frantic scrabbling and screeching noises later. The fox had been unattached and was now sulking on the opposite side of the alley, nursing its hurt pride at being chucked with force. “Oh, shit! I’m— are you okay?”

After a brief spell of considering whether or not to indulge in self pity, Gawain sort of shrugged. “Ah— All my fingers are still attached. Uhm. No. No I’ve decided, no I am not.”

Maybe not his most eloquent, but there was quite a lot of blood and that was always a bit surprising. Lancelot knelt down next to him with a very concerned expression on his face. Made to take his injured hand, thought better of it. “Uh, I’ll call— uh— I’ll call my mother. She can drive us to the hospital.” This wasn’t as much of a reassurance as he intended, and he gave a weak sort of grimacing smile and added, “Uh, cool blood, by the way. It’s nice.”

“Thanks. Uh, I made it myself,” Gawain joked weakly. “I could drive one handed. I really could. You don’t have to bother her. I don’t want to get blood in your mom's car, it’s rude.”

Lancelot stood abruptly, crossed his arms, donned an expression of fierce indignance. “You are _not_ driving yourself to the hospital with one hand,” he declared.

“Last week, when you cut your thumb on the roses, you still used the coffee machine and got blood all over it,” Gawain pointed out, but didn’t say anything else in protest as Lancelot pulled out his phone.

There was a brief and fruitlessly hopeful phone call which Gawain spent the duration of wishing desperately that Viviane would refuse. She did not. Then there was a horrifying ten minutes in which Lancelot tried to make conversation with him and he bled profusely. Towards the end of this he realised shock had set in, and managed to make this known. “Hypovolemic shock?” squeaked Lancelot. “This is bad. You’re going to die.”

“No, I…” Gawain trailed off. Words seemed very distant. “No, I mean, I’m shocked, I’m in pain, I’m feeling very shocked at how much pain I’m in. It’s less blood than it looks like.”

This mollified Lancelot somewhat. “You can lose up to three liters of blood,” he confided. “Isn’t that cool?”

Finally, horribly, the little red Prius pulled up at the mouth of the alley. “I don’t know how much a liter is,” Gawain said faintly. Then, because Lancelot was trying to be nice, he said. “That is cool. Thank you.”

The moments between the Prius arriving and being in the Prius, driving towards medical professionals, were too mentally agonizing to remember more than a blurry impression that Viviane did not like him, and this was upsetting. 

Then a sidewalk arrived, somehow closer to his eyes than normal, as though he had lost a foot of height, which considering the height he was already was an alarming prospect. Supportive hands. Vague muttered explanations about foxes which were met with incredulity. “It _was_ a fox,” he heard Lancelot protest at one point. “Dogs don’t have as much innate evil.” Then Lancelot was gently herded away, still babbling about the innate evil of foxes, while the nurses clicked their tongues and the hallway turned to the emergency room and the emergency room turned to vague, pained hospital cots and blindingly white bandages.

The thing about foxes, besides purported innate evil, was that they carried rabies. The unfortunate thing about rabies is everything about rabies, the viral proof that God plays evolutionary favourites. Immediate and stringent treatment is required for any bite or salival contact with any mammal, even cats and dogs, that don’t have rabies vaccinations on record, because once a host is symptomatic their death is practically guaranteed. The “practically” is generous; one person in recorded history has survived rabies without vaccination, and the miraculous recovery, dubbed the Milwaukee protocol for the hospital of its invention, has never been successfully recreated. 

So any exposure, despite protests that Reynard was too clever and imbued with private and purposeful wickedness to be operating under the incapacitation of a degenerative neurological disease, must be treated with a round of aggressive vaccination. First, the affected site must be washed thoroughly and cleaned with a stringent and stinging virucide. Persons not previously vaccinated require five injections over a two week period, the first two to be administered immediately. The first is infiltrated about the area of the contact, and contains not a vaccination but a dose of rabies antibodies, Human Rabies Immune Globulin, or HRIG, which starts up the immune system while the vaccine teaches it to make antibodies on it’s own. 

The second, which must be administered at a separate injection site, recommended IM, or the upper arm. This is the rabies vaccine, either HDCV, made from human cells, or PCECV, which is made from embryonic chicks; both inactivated rather than live attenuated, toxoid, conjugate etc. This requires boosters on days three, seven and fourteen following exposure. Because of the aggressive nature of the vaccine, low level side effects are common, including dizziness, headache, pain itching or redness at the site on injection, and low grade fever.

Unpleasant certainly, but considering the mortality rate and incredibly dangerous and painful symptoms proceeding death, a reasonable regimen. The first, flu like symptoms transition after a few days into the acute stage, wherein a sufferer begins experiencing cerebral malfunction with confusion, irritation, then hallucinations, hydrophobia, seizures and convulsions and extreme aggression.

“...but the Milwaukee protocol is really neat actually,” Gawain dimly registered someone saying. “What happens is, they put you into a coma on purpose, because it attacks the brain right? So it stops that, then you stay in a coma for like weeks getting injected with immune boosters and stuff.” Lancelot paused, frowning. “Too bad it doesn’t work.” 

Gawain stared. He vaguely recognized some inconsistencies in his worldview, namely that the last time he remembered existing, the sky outside the window had been a cloudless blue, and now it was not there, replaced with a deep blackness. 

“That’s night,” said Lancelot helpfully, and Gawain reasoned he must have asked about it. “Well, technically it’s morning.”

“Wrrglsz?” asked Gawain.

“Three in the morning.” Lancelot shifted in his seat, brushed a long strand of hair out of tired eyes. Next to him on a little hospital bedstand a few papers lay scattered, covered in frantic sketches. “You kinda clonked out after the vaccines. And then about an hour ago I think you started to have nightmares or something. There was a lot of twitching.”

Gawain blinked. Tried to remember a time before the rabies information. “Don’t remember that. Uh… was that you talking to me the whole time?”

“I thought it might— get through or something.”

It had. Gawain shivered under his thin sheet and tried to stop himself thinking about rabies as a very endearing thing. This was hard, given that it was Lancelot talking about it. “Have you— I mean— how long have you been here?”

Not looking him in the face, Lancelot shrugged. “Whole time. How are you feeling?”

_Sore_ , thought Gawain. _Exhausted. Feverish._ He stared at Lancelot, half a shadow in the corner of the little room, with his hurried drawings on the table next to him and his kind dark eyes. “Good,” he said, his voice hoarse. 

“Oh.” A smile, nervous and relieved all at the same time. “It’s good that you feel good.”

The world clicked, like a key sliding perfectly into a locked door. _Oh_ , thought Gawain. This, then, was why they called it _falling_ in love. It was like the ground had dropped out from underneath him, and all he could think was: _I would be your friend forever, and never feel like it was long enough._

“You know, since they get reused, someone has almost certainly died in that bed,” Lancelot pointed out thoughtfully. 

“Yeah,” said Gawain, “me.” And they laughed together, halfway between relief and morbid awkwardness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two aspec people, sitting on a google doc, trying to describe love between two aspec characters,
> 
> anyway it means whatever you want it to mean


End file.
